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Psychological  Monographs 


Voi.   X 

No.   7. 


April   1909 
Whole  No,  41 


THE 


Psychological  Review 


EDITED  BY 


J.  MARK  BALDWIN 


HOWARD  C.  WARREN 


CHARr,E^    : 

Yale  UNivzusirr 
/  the  Psychological  Mc 


The  Soci'il  Will 


r\;. . 


Edwin  Andre wJHajLden 

nation  presented  to   the  University  faculty  of  the  University  of 
'Michigan  for  the  degree  of  doctor  of  philosophy 


THE  REVIEW  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

41   NORTH  QUEEN  ST.,  LANCASTER,  PA. 

AND  BALTIMORE,  MD. 


The     Psychological     Review 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  MONOGRAPHS. 


VOL.   I. 

I.  *0n  Sensations  from  Pressure  and  Impact:  H.  Gripfixg.  Pp.  SS.  2.  Asso- 
ciation: M.W.  Calkins.  Pp.  vii  + 56.  3.  *Mental  Development  of  a  Child:  Kath- 
leen Moore.  Pp.  iv  +  150.  A.Study  of  Kant's  Psychology:  E.  F.  Buchner.  Pp. 
vin  +  208  '  J  bj  1 

VOL.   M. 

5.  Problems  in  the  Psychology  of  Reading:  J.O.-Quantz.  Pp.  iv  +  ol.  6.  The 
i-luctuation  of  Attention:  J.  P.  Hylan.  Pp.  ii  +  78.  7.  *Mental  Imagery :  Will- 
FRiD  Lay.  Pp.  11  +  59.  8.  ^Animal  Intelligence:  E.  L.  Thorndike.  Pp.  11  +  109. 
9.    Ihe  Emotion  of  Jov  :     Gforok  Va.v  Ness  Dearborn.     Pp.  ii  +  70.     10.    ^Conduct 

and  the  Weather :     •  ,      :  ,    ^     J  <      n::!.     Pp.  viil  +  10.3. 

VOL.    III. 

II  *0n  Inhibition:  B.  B.  Brerse.  Pp.  iv  +  r,5.  12.  On  After-images:  Shep- 
herd Ivory  Franz.  Pp.  iv  +  61.  13.  *The  Accuracy  of  Voluntary  Movement:  R.  S. 
Woodwork.  Pp.  vi  +  lll.  14.  A  Study  of  Lapses:  H.  Heath  Bawden.  Pp.  iv  + 
l~-.  15.  The  Mental  Life  of  the  Monkeys:  E.  L.  Thorndike.  Pp.  iv  +  57.  16.  *The 
Correlation  of  Mental  and  Physical  Tests.     C.  Wissler.     Pp.  iv  +  62. 

VOL.   IV. 

17.  Harvard  Psychological  Studies,  Vol.  I.;  containing  sixteen  oxperiinental  inves- 
tigations irom  thp  RMr^--!  P--"];-^]f>gical  Laboratory:  Edited  by  Hugo  MOnster- 
BJORG.     Pp.  vin+(;  '  ^ 

VOL.   V. 

18.  Sociability  and  Sympathy  :  J .  W.  L.  Jones.  Pp.  iv  +  91.  75  cents.  19.  The 
Practice  Curve:  J.  H.  Bair.  V^^.  70.  75  cents.  20.  The  Psychology  of  Expectation: 
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J.  B.  Miner.     Pp.  iv  f  \{){],           ,,u       22.  The  Perception  of  Number:     J.  F.  Messen- 

f-,^  X-   Ti''   '        '  '         '  '    ■  ^-  "^  ^^"^y  o^  Memory  for  Connected  Trains  of  Thought: 

^-  ^-  -tJ'  .,      75  cents. 

VOL.   VI. 

24.  A  Study  in  Reaction  Time  and  Movement:  T,  V.  Moore.  Pp.  iv  +  86.  75 
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cents.  26.  Time  and  Reality :  .J.  E.  Boodin.  Pp.  v+119.  $1.00.  27.  The  Differ- 
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University  of  Iowa  Studies  in  Psychology.  No.  IV.  Edited  by  Carl  E.  Seashore. 
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29.  Yale  Psychological  Studies,  New  Series,  Vol.1.  No,  i.  Edited  by  Charles 
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Closure.     Harvey  Carr.     Pp.  vi+127.     $1.25. 

VOL.   VIII. 

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^      40.  Studiec  f'-^"-'  +"-  "^'vhris  Hopkins  Psychological  Laboratory,  v  onim.niicated  by 

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Haydhn.     ]^])                   ;       -liio.    42  Furnato  in  press,  43  (iamble  in  pres-. 


PHILOSOPHICAL  MONOGRAPHS. 
VOL.  I. 

36.     ^Estbefir.    H. .■.«.:.....,.,.      jts   Nature    and    Funrri-r    -n   Epistemology.      W.  D. 


Furry.     Pp. 


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Psychological  Monographs 

Vol.  X  April  1909 

No.  2  Whole  No.  41 


THE 


Psychological  Review 


EDITED  BY 
J.  MARK  BALDWIN  HOWARD  C.  WARREN 

Johns  Hopkins  University  Princeton  University 

AND 

CHARLES  H.   JUDD 

Yale  University 

{Editor  of  the  Psychological  Monographs) 


The  Social  Will 


BY 

Edwin  Andrew  Hayden 

Dissertation  presented  to  the  University  faculty  of  the  University  of 
Michigan  for  the  degree  of  doctor  of  philosophy 


THE  REVIEW  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

41  NORTH  QUEEN  ST.,  LANCASTER,  PA. 

AND  BALTIMORE,  MD. 

UNI  VERS,  ry    ' 

OF  J 


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INTRODUCTION. 

The  following  thesis  has  grown  out  of  general  studies  in  soci- 
ology and  psychology  which  I  prosecuted  under  the  direction  of 
Professor  Cooley  and  Professor  Pillsbury.  So  far  as  anything 
new  is  offered  in  the  thesis,  I  may  say  it  consists  in  this:  that 
the  processes  rather  than  the  products  of  collective  mental  activ- 
ity have  been  kept  systematically  in  mind.  Suggestion  and 
imitation  have  received  very  little  attention,  in  the  belief  that 
they  contain  practically  nothing  beyond  what  was  alread)^  a 
matter  of  common  possession  in  the  doctrines  of  association 
and  apperception.  I  believe  that  the  conception  of  a  social 
personality  as  a  collective  total  organized  out  of  mental  systems 
that  interact  in  definite  ways,  is  of  more  fundamental  significance. 


193380 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

Chapter  I — The  Social  Consciousness. 

Section  i.  Spencer's  distinction  between  animal  and  social  groups  in  respect 
to  parentage  and  cooperation,  merely  biological. 

S.  2.     Reciprocity  of  thought  and  feeling  the  matter  of  social  importance. 

S.  3.  Two  kinds  of  communities,  the  instinctive  and  the  social.  The  nature 
of  instinctive  communities  most  clearly  revealed  by  the  life  of  insect  families. 
Some  other  animal  groups  present  a  transitional  stage. 

S.  4  and  5.     The  human  mind  the  only  truly  social  mind. 

S.  6.  Language  a  social  necessity.  It  is  the  most  delicate  instrument  for  the 
communication  of  thought  and  feeling. 

S.  7.  The  content  of  the  cultured  mind,  i.  e.,  the  ideas  with  which  it  is 
stocked,  largely  social  in  their  nature.  Illustrations  of  this  fact  furnished  by 
different  subjects  of  study. 

S.  8.  Mental  development  culminates  in  two  universes  of  fact  and  feeling: 
the  objective,  relating  to  the  physical  order;  and  the  subjective,  relating  to  the 
personal  order.    These  two  are  somewhat  confused  in  the  mythologic  mind. 

Chapter  II — The  Social  Personality. 

S.  I.  Two  fundamental  processes  in  the  social  mind,  desire  and  belief.  Dif- 
ference between  reactions  of  animals  and  purposive  control. 

S.  2.     Conditions  under  which  desire  arises. 

S.  3.     Theoretical  desires  arise  in  connection  with  mythologic  thought. 

S.  4.  But  for  the  most  part  knowledge  is  at  first  subordinated  to  practical 
needs.  This  is  true  of  the  average  mind  of  even  an  advanced  social  order. 
Mental  division  of  labor  assigns  the  task  of  thinking  to  a  select  few. 

S.  5.  Personal  ideas  play  a  considerable  part  in  directing  the  activity  of  the 
imagination. 

S.  6.     The  specific  content  of  desire  is  a  matter  of  history. 

S.  7.  The  psychological  nature  of  belief.  Emotion  in  belief:  case  of  Knox 
and  Loyola. 

S.  8.  World  of  sensible  experience  the  ultimate  universe  of  reality.  Asso- 
ciation changes  the  memories  of  history  at  times  into  unrealities. 

S.  9.  Native  attitude  of  the  mind  one  of  belief.  Faith  necessary  to  the  men- 
tal health  of  a  people.  Beliefs  are  outgrown.  Social  development  tends  to  make 
the  sphere  of  desire  and  belief  coincident. 

S.  10.  Desire  and  belief  systematically  coordinated  through  the  activity  of 
the  will. 

S.   II.     Psychological  nature  of  the  collective  will. 

S.  12.  Collective  deliberation  a  possibility,  though  less  controlled  than  that 
of  the  individual  mind.  The  state  expresses  a  collective  will.  Bryce  quoted  on 
the  work  of  the  state. 

\ 


11  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

S.  13.  Psychological  nature  of  the  ends  of  the  state.  Voluntary  control  in 
private  associations. 

S.  14.     The  concept  of  social  personality.    The  social  disposition. 

S.  15.  Habit  in  collective  volition.  The  development  of  the  individual  will 
a  process  of  infoldment  of  the  social  will. 

S.  16.     Conditions  under  which  ephemeral  beliefs  arise. 

Chapter  III — The  Systematization  of  Belief. 

S.  I.     Primitive  beliefs  grow  by  association. 

S.  2a.  Mental  systems  are  in  part  implicit  in  the  social  mind.  Conditions 
for  the  unfoldment  of  the  social  mind. 

S.  2b.  Beliefs  are  organized  into  a  few  fundamental  systems,  which  are 
united  in  the  self. 

S.  3.  Two  types  of  mental  systems:  associative  and  apperceptive,  both  fig- 
uring in  the  historical  development  of  thought. 

S.  4.  Nature  of  apperceptive  systems.  Relation  of  apperception  to  inven- 
tion and  imitation.    Illustration  from  the  history  of  the  theory  of  natural  selection. 

S.  5.     The  spread  of  ideas  through  the  social  medium. 

S.  6.     Recency. 

S.  7.     Intensity  and  vividness. 

S.  8.     Joint  Activity. 

S.  9.     Repetition,  condition  the  vigor  of  mental  systems. 

S.   10.     Interrelation. 

S.  II.  Two  classes  of  cognitive  systems,  conceptual  and  perceptual.  Theii 
interaction  in  the  development  of  knowledge. 

S.  12.  Systems  of  social  concepts.  All  conceptual  systems  modified  by  sub- 
stitution and  combination. 

S.  13.  Concepts  may  at  times  be  formulated  with  more  logical  precision 
than  the  existing  state  of  facts  warrants. 

S.  14.  Resistance  to  the  spread  of  ideas.  Mental  conflict  in  the  social  and 
individual  mind.    Conflict  settled  by  discussion  or  force. 

S.  15.     Conditions  of  mental  systems  that  cause  conflict. 

S.  16.     Solution  of  conflict  by  force. 

S.  17a.     Conflict  in  the  social  mind  marks  a  period  of  history. 

S.  17b.     Conflict  causes  social  thought  to  return  on  itself. 

S.  18.  Sometimes  a  permanent  division  of  opinion  is  the  outcome  of  mental 
strife. 

S.  19.     Mental  conflict  necessary  to  self-consciousness. 

S.  20.     Sentiments  cannot  be  bodily  transferred  from  one  culture  to  another. 

Chapter  IV — ^The  Consciousness  of  Moral  Right. 

S.  I.  The  interaction  of  individual  minds  takes  place  with  varying  degrees 
of  intimacy  in  respect  to  the  self. 

S.  2.  When  the  interaction  lies  within  some  cognitive  system,  consciousness 
of  self  is  reduced  to  a  minimum. 

S.  3.  Some  desires  are  connected  with  ideal  universes.  Moral  desire  is  desire 
for  an  ideal  self,  and  must  be  united  with  belief  in  order  to  have  any  practical 
effect  on  consciousness. 

S.  4.  The  universe  of  the  ideal  self  is  social.  The  ideal  self  is  imagined  as 
achieving  its  career  under  the  special  historic  conditions  of  the  social  order. 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS.  ill 

S.  5.  The  relation  of  the  self  to  others  in  the  moral  universe.  Inclusive 
social  ideals  possess  higher  moral  worth. 

S.  6.     Moral  evil  considered  as  a  condition  of  mental  conflict. 

S.  7.     Various  forms  of  the  aberration  of  the  moral  will. 

S.  8.     Fragmentary  character  of  the  immoral  life. 

S.  9.     Variations  of  the  social  ideal  limited  by  heredity  and  use. 

S.  10.     The  social  utility  of  ideals. 

S.  iia.  Nature  of  the  social  ideal.  Collective  ethics  usually  inferior  in  value 
to  individual. 

S.  lib.  The  higher  form  of  collective  ethics  means  more  comprehensive 
apperceptive  control  in  the  social  mind. 

S.  12.     Springs  of  moral  action  kept  healthy  only  by  effort. 

S.  13.  The  primary  moral  feelings  attach  most  firmly  to  the  ascendant  per- 
sonal universe  of  the  individual.  The  will  of  the  family  group  and  the  will  of 
the  state  grow  out  of  the  tribal  will. 

S.  14.     Ceremony  of  adoption  extends  the  sphere  of  moral  obligation. 

S.  15.     The  special  morality  of  social  groups. 

S.  16.     Moral  values  changed  by  historical  experiences. 

S.  17.  Principles  of  morality  stand  in  vital  relation  to  the  mental  and  moral 
health  of  the  individual  and  social  will. 

Chapter  V — ^The  Consciousness  of  Legal  Right. 

^S.  I.  The  social  will  lacks  the  unity  of  the  individual  will,  but  is  motived  by 
more  numerous  and  more  comprehensive  ends.  It  aims  at  ends  of  general 
validity,  as  seen,  for  instance,  in  what  it  effectuates  through  the  instrumentality 
of  the  law. 

^S.  2.  The  social  will  reacts  upon  the  individual  negatively  in  the  way  of 
restraint  exercised  through  the  medium  of  the  law.  Effect  of  punishment.  The 
social  will  also  reacts  in  a  more  positive  fashion  through  the  direct  encouragement 
and  assistance  which  it  gives  the  individual. 

S.  3.  Personality  of  the  judge  in  relation  to  the  application  of  the  law.  Judi- 
cial opinion  a  collaboration. 

S.  4.  Consciousness  of  the  law  varies  in  the  different  social  groups.  Most 
completely  organized  about  group  interests.  Vigorous  enforcement  of  the  law 
strengthens  the  feeling  of  legal  right. 

S-  5,6,7,8.     Conditions  that  determine  the  vigor  of  the  feeling  of  legal  right. 

S.  9.  Enforcement  of  a  right  by  the  state  increases  the  general  stability  of 
rights. 

S.  10.  Mental  conflict  an  important  condition  in  the  development  of  the 
consciousness  of  legal  right. 

S.  II.     Extent  to  which  the  individual  feels  the  law  as  a  constraint 

S.  12.  The  atomistic  view  of  political  relations  looks  upon  the  state  as  the 
mechanical  opposite  of  the  individual. 

S.  13.     Desire  for  freedom  is  preeminently  a  social  desire. 

S.  14.  Social  institutions  define  the  feeling  of  right.  Relation  of  custom  to 
the  feeling  of  legal  right.  Habits  of  private  life  an  important  element  in  the 
matter  of  public  control. 

S.  15.  Consciousness  of  a  common  weal  varies  considerably  in  the  history 
of  culture.    The  higher  forms  of  civic  idealism. 


IV  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

S.  i6.  Reality  of  a  national  ideal.  It  exists  interconnected  with  other  motives 
of  inferior  moral  worth  in  the  historic  process  which  has  organized  the  social 
will  in  the  state. 

S.  17.  The  state  immanent  in  the  reciprocal  relations  existing  between  the 
individuals  of  a  social  order. 

Chapter  VI — The  Social  Will  as  Expressed  in  the  State:  the  Theory 
OF  Sovereignty  in  its  Psychological  Bearings. 

S.  I.     Social  psychology  in  political  philosophy. 

S.  2.  Two  psychologic  facts  basic  to  an  understanding  of  the  subject — 
the  reality  of  the  individual  and  the  reality  of  the  social  will. 

S.  3.  Sovereignty  in  the  usual  sense  in  which  the  term  is  employed  presup- 
poses a  well  developed  social  consciousness. 

S.  4.  Sometimes  a  partial  or  group  will  becomes  ascendant.  Mental  effects 
of  despotic  authority. 

S.  5.  Ascendancy  more  organic  in  some  instances,  as  in  the  supremacy  of 
British  rule  in  India. 

S.  6.     Highest  organic  contact  possible  when  the  law-making  power  is  native. 

S.  7.  In  times  of  social  confusion,  there  is  no  social  will,  and  sovereignty  in 
the  sense  of  power  exercised  according  to  standards  of  right  exists  only  in  a 
limited  way. 

S.  8.  The  mode  of  determining  the  membership  of  the  governing  body  is 
only  indirectly  related  to  individual  freedom.  Essential  requirement  is  that  the 
governing  body  should  be  responsive  to  the  needs  of  the  people. 

S.  9.  A  close  interdependence  exists  between  political  and  other  social  insti- 
tutions. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL. 

BY 

Edwin  Andrew  Hayden. 

CHAPTER  I. 
THE    SOCIAL    CONSCIOUSNESS. 

1.  In  discussing  the  phenomena  which  distinguish  social 
groups  from  others,  Mr.  Spencer  writes  of  insect  communities  as 
follows :  " .  .  .  .  though  insects  exhibit  a  kind  of  evolution  much 
higher  than  merely  organic — though  the  aggregates  they  form 
simulate  social  aggregates  in  sundry  ways;  yet  they  are  not  true 
social  aggregates.  For  each  of  them  is  in  reality  a  large  family. 
It  is  not  a  union  among  like  individuals  independent  of  one 
another  in  parentage  and  approximately  equal  in  capacities;  but 
it  is  a  union  among  the  offspring  of  one  mother,  carried  on,  in 
some  cases  for  a  single  generation,  and  in  some  cases  for  more; 
and  from  this  community  of  parentage  arises  the  possibility  of 
unlike  classes  having  unlike  structures  and  consequent  unlike  func- 
tions. Instead  of  being  allied  to  the  specialization  which  arises 
in  a  society,  properly  so-called,  the  specialization  which  arises  in 
one  of  these  large  and  complicated  insect  families  is  allied  to 
that  which  arises  between  the  sexes.  Instead  of  two  kinds  of 
individuals  descending  from  the  same  parents,  there  are  several 
kinds  of  individuals  descending  from  the  same  parents;  and 
instead  of  a  simple  cooperation  between  two  differentiated  indi- 
viduals in  the  rearing  of  offspring,  there  is  an  involved  coopera- 
tion among  sundry  differentiated  classes  of  individuals  in  the 
rearing  of  offspring.''^ 

2.  Spencer  has  in  the  foregoing  indicated  some  distinctions 
of  fundamental  importance,  especially  in  the  idea  that  insect 
groups  are  more  like  an  expanded  family  than  a  society  strictly 

^  Principles  of  Sociology,  vol.  i,  pp.  5-6. 


EDWIN  ANDREW  HAY  DEN, 


so-called.  Wundt  has  expressed  the  same  idea  more  forcibly  by 
saying  that  the  so-called  ** animal  states"  are  "sexual  commu- 
nities, in  which  the  social  impulse  that  unites  the  individuals,  as 
well  as  the  common  protective  impulse,  are  modifications  of 
the  reproduction  impulse."^  But  the  fact  that  in  most  commu- 
nities differentiation  of  function  is  based  upon  a  thoroughgoing 
differentiation  of  structure,  so  that  individuals  performing  unlike 
services  are  physically  unlike,  possesses  no  more  than  a  biolog- 
ical significance.  The  important  thing,  so  far  as  these  and 
other  animal  groups  are  taken  to  be  the  precursors  of  real  soci- 
eties, is  the  way  in  which  the  individual  comes  to  share  in  the 
group  life — ^to  what  extent  the  group  life  modifies  his  life  and 
how  far  the  group  life  is  plastic;  that  is,  how  far  it  is  capable  of 
change  through  the  organization  of  its  own  economy.  Defining 
society  as  an  organized  total  of  thought,  feeling  and  volition,  we 
find  only  human  groups  to  be  truly  social;  so  that  we  cannot 
take  mere  reciprocity  of  services,  as  is  likely  to  be  done  in  a  nar- 
row economic  view,  to  be  the  measure  of  social  development. ^ 
We  do  not  count  the  slaves  of  Athens  an  integral  part  of  the 
Athenian  society,  but  rather  look  upon  them  as  the  physical  or 
economic  background  of  the  small  group  of  free  citizens,  among 
whom  there  went  on  an  active  exchange  of  thought  and  feeling. 
A  society  is  animated  by  a  common  consciousness  of  historic 
events,  of  traditions  religious,  political  and  industrial;  and  it  is 
chiefly  in  so  far  as  economic  relations  modify  these  contents  of 
the  social  mind  that  exchange  of  services  is  a  matter  of  impor- 
tance to  the  sociologist.  So  long  as  foreign  merchants  at  Rome 
were  mere  traders  with  the  Roman  people,  they  did  not  consti- 
tute an  integral  part  of  Roman  society;  but  when  through  the 
business  relations  created,  and  more  particularly  through  other 
relations  arising  from  the  marriages  which  they  contracted  with 
Roman  citizens,  it  became  necessary  for  the  courts  of  Rome  to 
deal  with  cases  between  the  stranger  and  the  citizen,  and  thus  to 
gradually  develop  a  system  of  legal  rules  defining  their  rights, 
there  was  going  on  a  process  of  assimilation,  changing  something 
which  was  in  its  inception  merely  economic,  into  something  to 

^  Outlines  of  Psychology,  2d  ed.,  p.  311. 
'  See  Tarde:  Laws  of  Imitation ,  p.  64. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  3 

a  degree  social.^    The  foreigner  was  then  beginning  to  share 
something  of  the  desires,  thoughts,  and  feehngs  of  the  citizen. 
Reciprocity  of  thought,  of  feehng,  of  desire,  of  motive  to  action, 
rather  than  reciprocity  of  service  is  the  real  index  of  social  rela-i, 
tions. 

3.  In  respect  to  the  mental  characters  displayed,  communi- 
ties may  be  divided  into  tv^o  widely  contrasted  types,  the  instinc- 
tive and  the  social.  Insect  communities  are  the  best  examples 
of  instinctive  groups,  while  a  modern  state,  as  a  highly  organ- 
ized purposive  association,  is  the  best  example  of  the  social. 
The  mentality  of  an  individual  in  an  instinctive  group  is  largely 
predetermined  at  birth.  The  individual  inherits  a  reflex  ner- 
vous mechanism  in  which  a  perfected  correlation  exists  between 
certain  sensory  stimuli  and  certain  movements  essential  to  its 
welfare.  Many  naturalists  are  inclined  to  regard  the  instinctive 
acts  of  wasps,  bees  and  ants  as  pure  mechanical  reflexes,  the 
most  successful  attempt  to  show  this  being  probably  that  of 
Bethe.2  If  this  view  is  true  the  only  psychical  attributes  which 
can  be  attributed  to  these  animals  are,  in  accordance  with  the 
usual  postulates  of  physiological  psychology,  a  certain  amount 
of  sensation  and  feeling  due  to  the  sensory  stimulation,  either 
from  external  objects  or  from  the  movements  themselves.  Use 
does  not  seem  to  modify  to  any  appreciable  extent  the  acts  of 
these  individuals :  so  that  the  particular  act  is  performed  about 
as  well  the  first  time  as  ever  and  then  only  in  response  to  imme- 
diate excitation.  Whenever  the  excitation  occurs,  the  response 
follows,  no  matter  if  the  present  conditions  under  which  it  occurs 
involve  collateral  results  of  a  detrimental  nature.  It  is  a  matter 
of  frequent  occurrence  that  the  same  instinct  is  found  in  various 
degrees  of  perfection  among  allied  species;  and  this  fact  with 
other  evidence,  strongly  supports  the  view  that  slow  mutations 
do  occur  in  the  mental  constitution  of  instinctive  groups.  This 
change  is  brought  about  by  the  selection  of  inborn  variations, 
and  not  through  the  transmission  of  habits,  which  latter  means 
some  capacity  for  learning  on  the  part  of  the  individual.    Nat- 

'  For  a  brief  account  of  the  Roman  Law  of  the  Nations,  above  referred  to, 
see  Bryce,  Studies  in  History  and  Jurisprudence,  p.  570  fF. 
^  Pfliiger's  Archiv.  f.  Physiol.,  vol.  70. 


EDWIN  ANDREW  HAYDEN. 


ural  selection  at  once  reconciles  the  apparent  contradiction  of 
individual  rigidity  and  specific  plasticity  in  a  thoroughly  satis- 
factory manner. 

4.  When  we  pass  to  other  animals,  we  do  not  find  instincts 
so  highly  speciaHzed  nor  so  mature  at  birth.  Habit  steps  in  to 
perfect  the  instinct;  that  is  to  say,  repetition  improves  the  inher- 
ited coordination  between  stimulus  and  movement.  In  conse- 
quence of  this  less  perfect  inborn  connection,  instincts  are  in 
these  cases  both  more  adaptable  and  transitory.  It  is  a  well 
known  fact  that  the  instincts  of  many  wild  animals  are  some-<^^^ 
what  modified  by  domestication  and  further,  in  the  absence  of 
proper  conditions  to  excite  the  instinctive  act,  the  instinct  may 
die  out.  The  gain  in  having  instincts  vague  and  general  lies  in 
the  accommodation  to  circumstances  which  is  thus  secured:  the 
loss  lies  in  the  lack  of  definiteness  and  precision  of  coordination. 
To  the  extent  that  instinct  is  highly  specialized,  is  the  mental 
life  of  the  individual  limited  to  processes  directly  connected  with 
the  instinct.  This  limitation  is  especially  evident  in  the  case  of 
animals  whose  life  shows  an  organization  of  mental  processes 
standing  in  immediate  relation  to  two  dominant  instincts — the 
sexual  and  the  alimentative.^  It  is  doubtful,  however,  whether, 
even  in  the  case  of  animals  which  profit  most  by  their  experi- 
ences, free  ideas  or  representations  are  to  any  extent  present; 
and  if  present,  they  are  probably  aroused  chiefly  "on  the  spur 
of  the  immediate  practical  advantage,"^  i.  e.,  upon  peripheral 
stimulation.  Such  associations  as  animals  do  form  seem  to  be 
chiefly  between  sense  impressions  and  impulses  to  activity. 
Representations  of  various  sorts  are  peculiarly  a  human  posses- 
sion. In  the  form  of  memory  images  of  either  the  remote  or 
resident  sensations  of  an  act,  they  appear  at  a  certain  level  of 
mental  development  as  a  matter  of  utility  to  control  action  in 
some  cases  as  peripheral  stimulation  had  done  before.  "With 
the  rise  of  language,  experience  became  conventionalized, 
and  set  rules  replaced  the  less  reliable  images.  These  still  per- 
sist, however,  (i)  where  arrangement  and  previsions  do  not  per- 

*  See  Wundt:  Human  and  Animal  Psychology^  sees.  23,  24,  27  and  28. 
^  See  monograph  by  Thorndike  on  Animal  Intelligence. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  5 

mit  linguistic  statement,  and  (2)  as  phantasy  images."^  Briefly, 
the  processes  of  the  mental  life  of  animals  do  not  extend  much 
beyond  what  Wundt  terms  passive  apperception,  and  at  best, 
there  can  be  but  faint  glimmerings  of  the  mental  processes 
which  we  know  in  the  human  mind  as  understanding  and  imagi- 
nation. 

5.  In  the  foregoing  description  of  the  animal  mind,  much 
has,  by  implication,  been  said  of  the  human  or  social  mind.  It 
is  not  a  mind  in  which  there  exist  reason  and  instinct  as  parallel 
psychic  processes:  it  is  a  mind  in  which  instinct  still  remains  as' 
impulses  or  tendencies  to  action  which  are  perfected  by  training, 
and  which  are  controlled  by  a  coordinated  adaptation  of  means 
to  ends.  Rationality,  in  other  words,  consists,  to  a  large  degree, 
in  the  harmonious  synthesis  of  the  perfected  impulses  in  a  uni- 
fied life  of  thought,  feeling  and  action.  But  purposive  control, 
exercised  through  a  knowledge  of  results,  exists  in  all  degrees 
of  perfection;  so  that  we  must  take  the  difference  between  the 
social  and  the  sub-social  to  be  one  of  degree  rather  than  of 
quality.  Instinctive  communities  like  those  of  ants  and  bees, 
have,  in  one  respect,  the  necessary  basis  for  the  development  of 
a  social  consciousness,  viz,  a  continuous  group-life,  which 
some  of  the  higher  species  of  solitary  habits,  like  the  gorilla,  do 
not  possess.  It  is  only  in  human  groups  that  we  find  both  requi- 
sites to  a  collective  consciousness,  viz,  continuity  of  the  group 
life  and  plasticity  of  the  individual  mind.  Here  the  individual 
mind  gets  a  content  and  organization  through  its  contact  with 
other  minds;  in  fact  in  consequence  of  the  rudimentary  state  of 
its  instincts,  such  contact  and  control  is  necessary  to  the  perfec- 
tion of  its  powers.  The  function  of  an  organized  social  life  in 
the  development  of  the  individual  mind  is  to  furnish  a  definite 
and  continuous  set  of  impressions  and  to  organize  these  into 
fundamental  mental  systems.  In  the  case  of  unstable  groups 
like  the  Fuegians,  the  group  life  is  too  discontinuous,  too  inter- 
mittent to  permit  the  individual's  mind  to  come  in  contact  with 
impressions  sufficiently  definite  and  varied  for  the  organization 
of  a  complex  mentality.    The  most  that  we  can  expect  in  cases 

^  Bcntley,  The  Memory  Image,  American  Journal  Psychology^  vol.  xi,  no.  I, 
P-  25. 


6  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAT  DEN. 

where  individual  capacities  are  not  much  ampHfied  by  social 
discipline  beyond  what  they  are  at  birth,  is  an  acuteness  of  sense 
discrimination, — a  conclusion  which  the  facts  of  comparative 
human  psychology  support.^  I  have  intentionally  used  the 
phrase,  "acuteness  of  sense  discrimination,"  rather  than  the 
words  used  by  Burton  in  writing  of  the  Bedouins,  viz,  a  "high 
organization  of  the  perceptive  faculties,"^  for  the  reason  that 
perception,  in  a  high  degree  of  organization,  implies  appercep- 
tive activities  which  only  a  social  state  can  make  possible.  A 
developed  world  of  sense  implies  something  more  than  the  mere 
capacity  to  discriminate  impressions :  it  implies  further  the  power 
to  compare  them,  and  thus  to  discern  deeper  unity  than  the  mere 
contiguity  of  space  or  time.  So  far  as  thinking  goes,  the  uncul- 
tivated mind  is  content  with  the  reproduction  of  concrete  indi- 
vidual experiences,  and  is  unconcerned  with  the  causal  relations 
of  phenomena  the  perception  of  which  requires  much  analysis 
and  abstraction.  Hence  in  the  classification  of  the  objects  of 
experience  such  a  mind  seizes  upon  the  obvious  and  superficial 
attributes.  The  scientific  mind,  however,  by  the  aid  of  delicate 
instruments,  which  have  been  perfected  by  the  combined  thought 
and  effort  of  many  generations,  amplifies  its  powers  of  sensible 
discrimination  infinitely  beyond  those  of  the  savage,  and  by 
means  of  the  capacity  of  analysis  and  abstraction  which  arises 
in  the  social  order,  coordinates  the  impressions  of  sense  into  an 
orderly  world  of  cause  and  effect.  In  other  words,  the  social 
life  has  given  him  an  apperceptive  basis  for  the  interpretation 
of  sensations,  and  this  basis  becomes  more  and  more  the  condi- 
tion of  the  way  in  which  he  perceives  the  external  world. ^  This 
fact  has  well  been  developed  by  Professor  Dewey*  in  the  follow- 
ing passage:  "Every  higher  analytic  stage  influences  immedi- 
ately the  lower  process,  rendering  it  more  definite.  It  is  synthet- 
ically combined  with  it.  Every  process  of  reasoning  expands  a 
judgment;  every  judgment  enlarges  a  concept;  every  concept 
adds  new  meaning  to  a  percept.     As  we  universalize,  we  also 

*  See  Spencer:  Principles  of  Sociology ^  vol.  i,  ch.  vii. 

'  Quoted  by  Spencer,  op.  cit.,  p.  78. 

^  See  Pearson's  Grammar  of  Science^  ch.  v,  sec.  II. 

^  Psychology,  ch.  ix,  Intuition.     Consult  the  entire  chapter. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL. 


see  the  particular  more  in  the  light  of  the  universal,  and  thus 
make  it  more  significant  and  more  definite.  .  .  .  The 
more  the  element  of  reasoning  is  involved,  the  more  does  the 
percept  mean,  or  tell  us  of  the  object.  There  is  a  complete 
implication  of  every  stage  of  self-development  in  every  other. 
The  scale  from  perception  to  systematization  looks  at  the  devel- 
opment as  an  analytic  process  of  growing  universality;  the  scale 
from  systematization  back,  looks  at  it  as  a  synthetic  process  of 
growing  definiteness.  As  a  matter  of  actual  psychological  fact, 
there  is  no  separation  of  ascending  and  descending  movement, 
but  every  concrete  act  of  mind  is  an  act  both  of  perception  and 
reasoning,  and  each  because  of  and  through  the  other."  In 
brief,  stimulation  arouses  in  the  cultivated  mind  apperceptive 
processes  by  means  of  which  external  objects  are  cognized  in 
their  general  relations,  but  it  arouses  in  the  savage  mind  only 
discrete  existences.  The  necessity  therefore  of  social  life  for  the 
full  realization  of  the  capacities  of  the  mind,  even  in  the  domain 
of  sensation,  is  abundantly  evident;  and  still  more  so  when  we 
come  to  the  higher  phases  of  mental  life  and  the  more  delicate 
and  subtle  feelings  and  emotions.  These  latter  arise  only  in 
some  social  situation,  involving  the  relation  of  self  to  others,  and 
presuppose  some  highly  developed  means  of  communication. 
This  we  have  in  language. 

6.  The  so-called  language  of  animals  can  scarcely  be  called 
a  language,  for  signs  discharge  no  further  function  than  arous- 
ing certain  responses  through  a  connection,  largely  inborn, 
between  certain  sensations  and  certain  movements.  Gesture 
language,  which  is  so  extensively  employed  by  savages  that  have 
a  scanty  vocabulary  of  articulate  speech,  can  become  a  true 
language,  i.  e.,  an  expressive  one,  because  it  has  in  itself  the 
possibility  of  becoming  an  instrument  in  some  degree  of  con- 
ceptual thought.  Gesture  can  express  concepts  of  a  low  degree 
of  generality,  i.  e.,  "universals  comprehending  particular  objects 
as  their  subordinate  elements;  but  they  can  only  to  a  very  limited 
extent  fix  attention  on  universals  having  as  their  subordinate 
elements  other  universals."*     It  is  only  in  speech,  however, 

^  Stout:  Analytical  Psychology,  vol.  ii,  p.  226. 


EDWIN  ANDREW  HAT  DEN. 


either  oral  or  written,  that  we  find  an  instrument  of  expression 
capable  of  responding  to  the  complex  needs  of  the  civilized  mind. 
It  is  unnecessary  here  to  enter  into  the  psychology  of  thought 
and  language  farther  than  to  remark  that  words  come  to  have 
significance  through  contiguous  association  with  the  various 
apperceptive  systems  of  the  mind.  What  I  desire  to  do  is  to 
specify  a  little  more  carefully  how  speech  functions  as  a  social 
process.  First  of  all,  conventional  language  is  a  system  of  signs 
of  "extreme  flexibility,  ''^  to  borrow  Kuelpe's  term.  Composed 
of  a  few  articulate  elements,  it  is  capable  of  combining  these  into 
an  indefinite  number  of  word  complexes  that  can  express  all 
varieties  of  objects,  qualities  and  conditions.  Linguistic  inven- 
tion, which  at  certain  stages  of  social  culture,  is  as  much  an 
impulse  or  desire  as  other  kinds  of  social  invention,  forms  in 
accordance  with  the  general  laws  of  the  language  new  words 
and  phrases  which  are  readily  assimilated  with  the  old  stock. 
In  this  way  language  soon  becomes  an  instrument  perfectly 
subservient  to  the  will  of  man.  Being  a  temporal  rather  than  a 
spatial  complex,  it  is  more  adequate  to  deal  with  the  continuity 
of  our  mental  hfe  than  other  forms  of  expressions,  such  as  paint- 
ing and  sculpture.  A  statue  may  portray  a  single  emotion  or 
situation  in  a  manner  that  surpasses  verbal  description;  but  in 
the  complex  relations  of  life,  where  time  relations  are  important 
elements,  and  where  for  practical  volition  it  is  necessary  that 
mental  systems  should  be  unfolded  in  their  details,  language  is 
alone  adequate  to  the  task.  Again,  language  fixes  permanently 
our  systems  of  conceptual  thoughts.  I  do  not  mean  by  this  that 
concepts  do  not  change  with  the  progress  of  civilization,  but 
rather  verbal  description  enables  us  to  understand  a  conceptual 
system,  no  matter  how  long  since  it  may  have  been  expressed. 
We  have  no  trouble  in  understanding  Newton's  views  on  the 
nature  of  light,  although  the  corpuscular  theory  is  no  longer 
held.  Provided  we  have  had  the  requisite  experience  and  have 
competent  powers  of  understanding,  we  can,  by  saturating  our- 
selves with  his  writings,  organize  in  our  own  minds  to  a  consid- 
erable degree,  the  apperceptive  systems  acting  in  his,  and  thus 
come  to  understand  something  of  the  nature  of  his  achievements. 

^  Outlines  of  Psychologyy  p.  14. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL. 


Language  thus  makes  possible  the  transmission  of  acquired  \ 
knowledge  from  one  generation  to  the  next;  and  in  this  way  the  j 
cooperation  of  individual  minds  extends  in  point  of  time  far  ( 
beyond  the  allotted  span  of  life. 

!  7.  Thus  the  cultured  mind  bears  in  its  type  or  quality  unmis-  \ 
takable  evidence  of  its  social  origin;  and  it  is  equally  true  that  I 
its  contents,  or  in  other  words,  the  ideas  with  which  it  is  stocked,  / 
are  but  individual  totals  interconnected  in  a  collective  mental  / 
process.  Not  only  does  the  child's  hereditary  equipment  in  the 
way  of  instincts  and  capacities  imply  a  social  history,  but  the 
discipline  which  transforms  this  heritage  into  a  reality  is  social 
to  the  last  degree.  The  pedagogical  romanticism  which  holds 
that  the  human  mind  can  be  developed  by  the  indiscriminate 
and  fortuitous  play  of  physical  forces  upon  the  senses  is  a  delu- 
sion from  top  to  bottom.  The  child's  earliest  experiences  with 
physical  things  is  under  the  guidance  of  persons,  and  so  habitual 
is  the  association  of  persons  with  things  that  he  at  first  views 
physical  objects  almost  entirely  from  the  standpoint  of  social 
utilities.  It  is  a  long  time  before  he  is  able  to  make  complete 
abstraction  of  the  personal  element  in  the  way  in  which  it  is 
done  in  such  objective  sciences  as  chemistry  and  physics.  A 
horse  for  instance  does  not  mean  an  object  of  certain  anatomical 
and  physiological  characteristics,  but  something  on  which  he 
can  ride,  which  his  father  owns,  etc.  His  attitude  is  rather  that 
of  primitive  man  in  the  stage  of  mythologic  thought.  The  sav- 
age reads  into  nature  his  own  thoughts  and  feelings,  and  sees  in 
natural  forces  personalities  of  various  kinds.  So  predominant 
in  fact  is  the  personal  bias  in  the  savage  theory  of  things  that 
it  has  been  given  the  significant  title  of  "personalism."  And 
the  general  features  of  this  mode  of  thought  are  found  to  be  so 
uniform  among  people  in  a  certain  grade  of  mental  develop- 
ment, even  in  the  entire  absence  of  historic  contact,  that  the 
tendency  of  the  human  mind  to  think  in  personal  terms  must  be 
classed  as  one  of  its  fundamental  traits.  So  the  child,  in  recap- 
itulating the  broad  features  of  race  history,  shows  the  same 
tendency  toward  a  personal  view  of  things.  The  whole  system 
of  education  through  which  he  passes  is  largely  a  procedure 
clarifying  the  relations  which  the  immediate  social  facts,   viz. 


10  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAT  DEN. 


personal  ideas,  sustain  to  each  other  or  to  things.  Aside  from 
a  few  theorems  respecting  the  combination  of  numbers,  arith- 
metic is  a  quantitative  exploitation  of  social  relations  in  the  busi- 
ness world.  Historically  it  is  an  evolution  from  a  primitive 
concrete  social  arithmetic  which  existed  long  before  any  theory 
of  pure  number  was  thought  of.  Geography,  too,  is  a  social 
discipline,  being  in  fact  the  study  of  the  earth  as  modified  by 
human  action.  And  of  course  history  in  the  political  sense  of 
the  term  is  preeminently  a  study  of  social  relations  and  activi- 
ties. The  personal  element,  however  much  crowded  into  the 
marginal  regions  of  consciousness,  remains  an  inseparable  part 
of  the  totality  of  conditions  which  make  possible  a  study  of 
natural  forces.  In  fact,  the  psychologist  whose  province  of 
study  is  the  human  personality  in  all  phases  of  its  manifestation, 
is  not  dealing  with  an  experience  different  as  a  manifold  from 
that  which  the  physicist  studies.  The  difference  lies  in  the 
point  of  view.  The  physicist  makes  abstraction  of  the  personal 
variation  or  event,  or  better  treats  it  as  a  constant  factor,  by 
giving  the  limits  of  error  to  his  results,  whereas  the  law  of  per- 
sonal variation  is  precisely  the  thing  of  interest  to  the  psychol- 
ogist. 

8.  In  the  period  of  mythologic  thought,  the  consciousness  of 
the  individual  self  is  beginning  to  emerge,  as  is  evident  in  the 
fact  that  primitive  man  projects  his  own  thoughts  and  feelings 
into  the  process  of  nature.  Although  he  is  for  the  most  part 
unaware  of  the  fact  of  projection,  yet  the  image  of  self,  thus 
reflected  in  nature,  serves  with  tribal  experience,  as  a  nucleus 
around  which  the  feeling  of  self  clusters.  There  is  now  felt  a 
kinship  for  nature  which  is  wanting  in  the  latter  stages  of  scien- 
tific thought.  As  soon  as  scientific  investigation  begins  to  dis- 
cover regularity  in  the  flow  of  natural  events,  the  personalities 
of  nature  are  metamorphosed  into  natural  processes,  entirely 
unconscious  in  themselves,  and  totally  objective  to  the  human 
mind — processes  which  may  thus  become  a  matter  of  universal 
apperception.  But  even  then  the  personal  feeling  for  nature 
still  remains  in  the  religious  and  poetic  consciousness,  which 
feels  in  the  unity  of  nature  the  presence  of  an  immanent  reason. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE    SOCIAL    PERSONALITY. 

A.  Desire. 

Tarde  has  analyzed  the  mental  Hfe  of  society  into  two  funda- 
mental processes,  desire  and  belief.^  I  have  accepted  this  analy- 
sis as  probably  the  most  rational  one  in  the  present  state  of  the 
analytical  psychology  of  the  social  mind. 

I.  Reaction,  or  movement  in  response  to  external  stimula- 
tion, is  shown  by  all  systems  of  energy.  With  some  the  stimu- 
lation, although  very  slight,  results  in  the  immediate  disintegra- 
tion of  the  system;  with  others  the  stimulation  produces  a 
temporary  change  in  the  configuration  of  the  system,  after  which 
the  system  regains  its  former  condition.  In  the  words  of  mechan- 
ics, the  first  are  said  to  be  unstable,  the  second,  stable  systems 
of  energy.  Living  aggregates  are  the  most  complex  specimens 
of  the  second  kind.  We  see  both  plants  and  animals  going 
through  a  coordinated  series  of  activities  which  from  the  out- 
side, seem  to  be  under  the  guidance  of  some  purpose  or  end. 
Examined  more  closely,  however,  most  of  these  activities  are 
found  to  lack  the  one  essential  feature  of  purposive  control, 
which  is  this :  responding  to  new  situations  by  an  activity  that 
is  due  to  an  internal  development  and  organization  of  impres- 
sions. If  an  adaptation  has  been  developed  to  an  external  ele- 
ment A,  which  uniformly  in  the  history  of  the  species  has  been 
associated  with  B  and  C,  both  harmless  to  the  organism;  and  if 
A  is  now  connected  in  a  concrete  total  consisting  of  D  and  E, 
both  harmful  to  the  organism,  but  for  which  no  inhibitive  adjust- 
ment exists,  then  the  reaction  to  A  will  occur  with  the  same 
certainty  as  before,  with  perhaps  death  as  a  consequence,  owing 
to  the  harmful  results  coming  from  D  and  E.  A  survey  of  all 
the  facts  relating  to  activity  of  this  sort  precludes  the  supposition 

^  The  Laws  of  Imitation,  New  York:  Henry  Holt  and  Company,  p.  145. 


12  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAT  DEN. 

that  it  has  anything  in  it  analogous  to  what  we  know  in  ourselves 
as  purposive  or  voluntary  control.  We  describe  behavior  of 
this  sort  in  a  negative  way  by  saying  that  it  is  unleari\ed  or 
native;  or,  in  other  words,  that  it  is  the  immediate  expression 
of  the  inherited  constitution.  It  is  the  most  widespread  and 
basic  form  of  behavior  in  the  animal  kingdom.  But  in  the 
higher  vertebrates,  as  has  been  already  noted,  these  instinctive, 
or  native  connections,  are  changed  in  the  course  of  the  individu- 
ual's  life,  such  modification  being  especially  pronounced  in  the 
case  of  man,  with  whom  instinctive  actions  produce  experiences 
which,  organized  into  memories,  result  in  forming  an  idea  of 
the  end  or  object  toward  which  the  striving  is  directed. 

2.  An  impeded  activity  manifests  itself  in  consciousness  as 
a  longing  or  craving — a  feeling  of  unrest,  which,  when  processes 
of  attention  and  knowledge  are  developed,  sets  going  a  series  of 
mental  changes  that  terminate  in  removing  the  feeling  from 
consciousness.  These  feelings  are  parts  of  an  interconnected 
process  of  ideational  and  affective  elements  which  form  a  total  with 
clearly  distinguished  features.  Such  interconnection  changes 
the  vague  feeling  into  a  definite  one,  conscious  of  the  means  of 
satisfaction,  that  is,  into  a  desire.  The  attachment  of  the  feel- 
ing to  a  specific  ideational  content  marks  the  rise  of  voluntary 
control.  In  the  course  of  time  a  definite  means  of  attaining  the 
object  which  satisfies  a  desire  is  selected.  With  this  selection 
comes  the  repetition  of  a  definite  set  of  experiences  to  which  the 
feeling  adheres.  The  desire  stretches  over  all  the  component 
parts  of  the  process  of  realization,  and  thus  includes  a  represen- 
tation of  the  means  as  well  as  of  the  end.  In  fact  the  means  as 
something  existing  apart  from  the  end  is  an  abstraction.  In  so 
far  as  any  part  of  the  process  of  realization  is  unforeseen  the 
desire  is  vague  and  ill-defined.  Conversely,  to  the  extent  that 
any  part  of  the  process  of  realization  becomes  better  defined  is 
the  desire  less  impulsive.  As  the  organization  of  experience 
goes  on  a  desire  whose  satisfaction  involves  the  willing  of  a 
complex  act  is  likely  to  split  up  into  a  number  of  reciprocally 
limiting  and  hence  more  specific  desires,  forming  a  system  in 
which  there  exist  various  degrees  of  subordination  and  ascend- 
ency.   Anything  that  arrests  the  process  of  realization  at  any 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  1 3 

particular  point,  emphasizes  that  part  and  tends  to  disengage 
it  from  the  total  activity,  and  raise  it  to  the  status  of  an  inde- 
pendent voHtion.  The  detachment  of  a  partial  volition  is  also 
facilitated  by  its  functioning  as  a  component  of  several  volitional 
processes.  Again  the  particular  experiences  connected  with  a 
partial  volition  may  be  a  source  of  satisfaction  in  themselves, 
independent  of  their  connection  in  a  more  comprehensive  proc- 
ess. The  ideal  representation  of  this  satisfaction  is  equivalent 
to  the  formation  of  a  new  desire.  The  ascendency  which  a 
desire  may  attain  is  limited  in  two  ways:  ist,  by  the  relation  of 
the  desire  to  the  self,  as  being  a  member  of  the  individual's 
entire  system  of  desires;  and  2d,  by  the  fact  that  the  volitional 
process  through  which  a  desire  is  realized,  tends  to  become 
automatic.  Perfect  coincidence  between  the  appearance  of  a 
want  and  its  means  of  satisfaction  would  to  a  large  extent  do 
away  with  that  ideal  representation  which  is  the  very  essence 
of  desire.  The  only  thing  that  will  keep  a  periodic  desire, 
receiving  full  satisfaction  from  passing  to  the  marginal  regions 
of  attention,  is  some  change  of  the  circumstances  in  which  it 
recurs.  Such  change  means  a  modification  of  the  desire,  so 
that  complete  satisfaction  is  no  longer  obtained.  The  desire  is 
then  again  able  to  command  the  attention,  and  lead  to  the  devis- 
ing of  new  means  of  satisfaction. 

3.  Purely  practical  desires  are  far  from  constituting  the 
entire  system  of  desires  even  in  the  case  of  primitive  man.  Spe- 
cific desires  of  a  non-utilitarian  character  soon  appear  in  con- 
nection with  mythological  systems.  As  soon  as  the  mental 
progress  of  a  people  has  reached  a  point  where  wants  are  to 
some  extent  anticipated,  the  mental  life  begins  to  expand  beyond 
the  immediate  present,  and  the  imagination  on  the  basis  of 
certain  social  experiences  constructs  an  ideal  world,  where 
desires  quite  remote  from  economic  wants  receive  satisfaction. 
In  mythological  systems,  as  is  well  known,  we  have  a  blending 
of  science,  religion  and  philosophy,  not  only  as  regards  the  con- 
cepts, but  also  the  desires  and  beliefs  peculiar  to  each.  Out  of 
this  complex  the  more  intellectual  desires  of  science  and  philos- 
ophy detach  themselves  and  culminate  in  the  pure  love  of  knowl- 
edge for  its  own  sake,  while  the  other  desires  less  directly  con- 


14  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

nected  to  the  order  of  sensible  experience,  become  interconnected 
in  a  separate  system  of  moral  and  religious  desire. 

4.  Knowledge,  however,  remains  for  a  long  time  subordinated 
to  practical  ends,  that  is,  it  remains  imbedded  in  volitional 
processes  that  aim  to  effect  some  change  in  the  world  of  things. 
The  development  of  perception  and  images  of  memory  is  the 
psychic  side  of  a  process  which  has  for  its  other  side  the  defini- 
tion of  motor  activity.  The  attainment  of  an  object  of  desire, 
as  already  pointed  out,  necessitates  the  ideal  representation  of  a 
series  of  partial  acts,  and  the  more  detailed  such  construction 
the  more  perfect  the  satisfaction  of  the  desire.  Thus  the  selec- 
tion of  the  best  means  of  attaining  a  given  end  involves  an  in- 
creasing amount  of  intellectual  activity  as  experience  expands. 
Hence  it  happens  that  the  apperceptive  activities  of  relating  and 
comparing,  of  analyzing  the  mental  aggregates  formed  by  asso- 
ciation out  of  the  cognitive  elements  of  motor  experiences,  may 
arise  in  the  course  of  practical  activities.  But  deliberation  on 
the  choice  of  means  postpones  the  satisfaction  by  the  amount  of 
time  which  it  occupies,  and  thus  conflicts  in  one  way  with  the 
realization  of  desire.  The  checking  of  a  motor  tendency  weak- 
ens it  so  that  deliberation  may  be  protracted  to  a  point  where 
it  defeats  its  own  purpose.  This  antagonism  between  thinking 
and  doing  is  a  matter  of  common  observation.  The  practical 
man  seldom  takes  interest  in  theoretical  questions,  rarely  engag- 
es in  mental  activities  that  have  no  aim  beyond  affecting  some 
change  in  the  world  of  ideas.  It  is  by  means  of  the  social  hered- 
ity that  a  reconciliation  of  this  conflict  is  secured.  Individual 
wills  enter  into  a  more  comprehensive  psychic  process,  the  social 
will,  by  which  interconnection  society  is  enabled  to  attain  it  sends 
by  a  mental  division  of  labor.  In  this  way  activities  may  be 
going  on  simultaneously  in  the  social  mind  that  would  be  some- 
what incompatible  in  the  individual  mind.  Mental  activity  of 
a  theoretical  sort  is  limited  to  one  social  group,  and  practical 
endeavor  to  another.  The  final  expression  of  some  epoch-mak- 
ing conception  is  invariably  the  work  of  some  thinkers  of  trans- 
cendent genius.  Once  the  idea  becomes  articulate  it  spreads 
through  the  social  medium,  and  after  its  incorporation  into  the 
fabric  of  social  thought,  it  becomes  a  source  of  common  desire. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  1 5 

5.  While  we  can  speak  with  truth  of  the  interaction  of  indi- 
vidual wills  in  a  higher  or  collective  will,  we  should  not  forget 
that  the  individual  will  is  part  of  a  concrete  personality,  and  that 
these  personalities  interact  more  or  less  in  their  entirety.  Out 
of  this  interaction  arise  the  personal  ideas  and  feelings  which  in 
the  period  of  primitive  culture  enter  into  the  apperception  of 
the  external  world.  Personal  ideas  and  feelings  are  gradually 
detached  from  the  objective  ideas  and  their  related  feelings, 
because  of  the  difference  in  the  relation  in  which  the  two  sets 
stand  to  the  will.  This  detachment  does  not  extinguish  the 
system  of  personal  ideas  and  feelings,  for  they  continue  to  exist 
in  a  world  of  their  own,  the  world  of  social  relations.  The 
separation  between  these  worlds,  however,  is  never  complete, 
for  as  a  matter  of  history  the  two  have  ever  interacted.  Though 
the  universe  of  personal  ideas  and  feelings  ceases,  in  the  course 
of  time,  to  influence  immediate  sensible  experience,  yet  in  the 
larger  and  broader  aspects  of  life,  where  religious  faith  finds 
play,  it  ever  remains  of  sovereign  importance.  When  sensible 
experience  comes  to  check  or  suppress  the  fundamental  impulses 
of  man,  the  will  transforms  the  elements  of  social  experience 
into  "an  existence  that  fully  corresponds  to  the  wishes  and 
requirements  of  the  human  mind,"*  forming  the  universe  of 
moral  and  religious  belief. 

6.  The  specific  content  which  desire  assumes,  is  a  matter  of 
national  history.  Says  Tarde:  "Every  organic  want  is  experi- 
enced in  the  characteristic  form  which  has  been  sanctioned  by 
surrounding  example.  The  social  environment,  in  defining  and 
actualizing  this  form  has,  in  truth,  appropriated  it.  Even  desires 
for  nutrition  and  reproduction  have  been  transformed,  so  to 
speak,  into  national  products.  Sexual  desire  is  changed  into  a 
desire  to  be  married  according  to  the  diff^erent  religious  rites  of 
different  localities.  Desire  for  food  is  expressed  in  one  place  as  a 
desire  for  a  certain  kind  of  bread  or  meat;  in  another,  for  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  grain  or  vegetable."^  Desires  are  thus  refined  by 
the  social  experience  coming  from  the  volitions  which  they  them- 
selves create.     It  may  be  said  with  Tarde  that  the  means  of 

^  Wundt,  EthicSy  vol.  i,  p.  59. 
^  Laws  of  Imitation^  p.  44. 


1 6  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAYDEN. 

satisfaction  in  a  measure  create  the  desire,  for  in  defining  and 
particularizing  it,  they  Hmit  the  lines  along  which  volition  moves 
in  its  effort  to  satisfy  the  desire.  This  statement  seems  to  be 
contradicted  by  the  fact  that  the  means  do  not  aWays  lie  in  the 
order  of  sensible  experience.  But  in  answer  to  this,  it  should 
be  noted,  that  desires  attaching  to  a  universe  which  the  indi- 
vidual regards  as  imaginary,  are,  as  a  rule,  rather  evanescent, 
arising  in  connection  with  complex  modes  in  the  cognitive  syn- 
thesis of  social  experience,  and  further  that  imaginary  creations 
bear  a  close  resemblance  to  the  objects  of  sensible  experience 
so  far  as  conditions  of  space,  time  and  the  general  qualities  of 
human  nature  are  concerned.  Persistent  desires,  however,  fail 
to  receive  full  satisfaction  in  the  imaginary  creation  of  the  indi- 
vidual, for  there  remains  beneath  all  an  abiding  sense  of  the 
unreality  from  which  there  is  no  escape,  except  in  those  cases 
where  the  imaginary  creation  has  been  produced  by  the  trans- 
formation of  historical  experience  and  has  thus  acquired  the 
status  of  a  belief. 

B.  Belief. 

7.  Another  mode  of  consciousness  in  which  the  ideational 
and  affective  compounds  of  experience  are  connected,  is  belief. 
The  representation  of  the  satisfaction  of  desire  involves  a  series 
of  specific  affirmations  which  are  not  detached  judgments  but 
interdependent  parts  of  a  total  process  connecting  means  and 
end.  Such  interconnection  is  belief.  Belief  involves  knowledge, 
but  is  not  identical  with  it,  for  we  have  perfectly  clear  and  dis- 
tinct ideas  about  many  things  that  we  disbelieve,  as  on  the  other 
hand  we  believe  some  things  of  which  our  conceptions  are  by 
no  means  the  clearest.  The  multitudinous  creations  of  fancy 
recorded  in  the  literature  of  the  world,  are  things  that  do  not 
arouse  in  us  the  sense  or  feeling  of  reality.  A  cognition  in  order 
to  become  a  belief,  must  have  some  "fringe  of  consciousness'' 
added  to  it.  It  must  be  able  to  evoke  in  the  mind  an  emotional 
color  in  addition  to  the  feelings  of  meaning  and  relationship 
which,  though  evanescent,  form  the  staple  of  the  cognitive 
consciousness.  Belief  stands  in  intimate  relation  to  the  self  on 
the  affective  side,  and  to  the  objective  world  on  the  cognitive 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  1 7 

side.  Things  which  are  a  matter  of  common  consent,  being 
acted  upon  from  day  to  day  as  habit,  are  usually  not  regarded 
in  the  light  of  behef,  because  the  feeling  of  assurance,  or  the 
"emotion  of  conviction,''  as  it  has  been  called  by  Bagehot,  is 
absent.^  When,  however,  some  obstruction  to  our  practical  or 
theoretical  endeavor  arises,  leading  to  the  postponement  of 
gratification,  the  mind  is  confronted  with  a  situation  in  response 
to  which  the  feeling  of  the  reality  or  unreality  of  some  particular 
thing  emerges.  Deep  conviction  is  associated  with  strong  feel- 
ings. When  such  conviction  is  challenged  the  whole  self  recoils : 
"  Men  in  these  intense  states  of  mind  have  altered  all  history," 
writes  Bagehot,  "changed  for  better  or  worse  the  creeds  of 
myriads,  and  desolated  or  redeemed  provinces  and  ages.  Nor 
is  this  intensity  a  sign  of  truth,  for  it  is  precisely  strongest  in 
those  points  in  which  men  differ  most  from  each  other.  John 
Knox  felt  it  in  his  anti-Catholicism;  Ignatius  Loyola  in  his  anti- 
Protestantism;  and  both,  I  suppose,  felt  it  as  much  as  it  was 
possible  to  feel  it."^  Both  Knox  and  Loyola  were  one  with  the 
cause  for  which  they  stood;  the  emotion  of  conviction  assumed 
a  fanatical  ascendency  because  of  the  intense  self-feeling  involved, 
the  belief  in  both  cases  commanding  the  whole  resources  of  the 
will.  The  rationality  of  a  belief  as  measured  by  the  criteria 
of  reality  set  up  by  science,  is  in  general  a  matter  of  subordinate 
importance,  as  the  social  function  of  belief  is  to  organize  the 
fundamental  desires  of  humanity,  and  to  do  this  a  belief  must 
possess  strong  affective  elements.  Religious  and  moral,  and  in 
some  instances  political  beliefs,  possess  these  characteristics. 
8.  It  may  be  said  in  a  general  way  that  the  world  of  sensible 
experience  is  taken  commonly  to  be  the  ultimate  universe  of 
reality.  This  attitude  of  strong  conviction  toward  the  reality 
of  the  external  world,  arises,  as  Stout  has  clearly  shown,^  from 
the  Hmitations  which  are  imposed  from  without  upon  the 
activity  of  the  will.  We  find  ourselves  unable  to  manipulate 
the  objects  of  perception  just  to  suit  our  fancy;  in  the  effort  to 
do  so  the  feeling  of  their  reality  clearly  emerges.    So  too,  when 

^  Literary  Studies y  The  Emotion  of  Conviction. 
'  Analytical  Psychology^  vol.  ii,  pp.  239-243. 


1 8  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

we  run  across  some  stubborn  fact  of  experience  which  blocks 
all  our  processes  of  thought  and  refuses  to  be  explained  away, 
we  become  painfully  aware  of  the  frailty  of  our  ideal  creations. 
Thus  thought  combinations  in  proportion  to  the  facility  with 
which  they  can  voluntarily  be  altered  lose  the  moments  of 
reality.  It  is  especially  for  this  reason  that  the  mind  is  usually 
alive  to  the  unreality  of  the  images  of  the  imagination.  In  other 
cases  where  the  alteration  has  occurred  independent  of  the  will 
as  a  matter  of  mere  association  or  assimilation  the  mind  is  likely 
to  accept  the  modifications  as  real.  The  illusions  due  to  preper- 
ception  are  examples  of  this  sort.  Frequent  repetition  of  a 
thing  makes  us  strongly  disposed  to  believe  in  its  reality:  the 
more  often  a  psychic  process  is  recollected,  the  less  is  the  effort 
necessary  to  restore  it,  so  that  while  it  is  becoming  more  firmly 
fixed  in  the  memory,  the  mental  experiences  connected  with 
its  invention  are  being  forgotten.  The  fictitious  idea,  when 
thus  freed  from  all  such  associations,  may  find  lodgment  among 
the  true  memories,  and  thus  seem  to  the  individual  to  refer  to 
some  part  of  his  past  life.  Association  has  brought  the  idea 
within  the  circle  of  remembered  sensible  experience.  The  rate 
at  which  the  transformation  of  the  contents  of  memory  goes  on 
has  much  to  do  with  the  extent  to  which  the  feeling  of  unreality 
is  aroused  by  a  fictitious  idea.  Frequently  the  memories  of 
history  become  changed  in  the  course  of  centuries  into  unreali- 
ties rivalling  the  boldest  creations  of  fiction;  yet  so  gradual  has 
been  the  change,  that  the  mutations  have  escaped  detection. 
Such  alteration  of  the  memories  of  history  frequently  serves  the 
high  purpose  of  allowing  greater  scope  to  the  sway  of  social 
ideals.  In  the  period  of  mythologic  thought  sensible  experience 
does  not  conflict  with  monstrous  beliefs  in  ghosts,  demons,  and 
other  supernatural  agents,  for  the  reason  that  nature  then  mir- 
rors the  capricious  impulses  of  the  savage,  but  as  soon  as  per- 
ceptions are  brought  under  some  concept  of  order,  these  beliefs 
or  those  into  which  they  are  changed,  are  likely  to  be  held  valid, 
not  of  the  present  order  of  things,  but  of  some  past  or  future 
state  of  existence.  If,  however,  such  beliefs  still  remain  potent 
in  their  influence  on  human  conduct,  it  is  through  the  fact  that 
they  still  retain  a  stable  connection  with  some  system  of  sensible 
experience. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  1 9 

9.  The  native  attitude  of  the  mind  toward  its  thought  com- 
binations is  one  of  behef,  an  attitude  which  is  checked  through 
painful  experience.  A  successful  issue,  whether  a  matter  of 
accident  or  not,  confirms  the  belief,  and  a  few  successful  trials, 
when  disproof  is  difficult,  are  sufficient  to  firmly  implant  the 
belief  in  the  mind  of  the  race.  Something  of  this  pristine  faith 
is  necessary  to  the  mental  health  of  a  people.  Though  many 
of  the  cosmological  beliefs  of  primitive  man  have  disappeared 
with  the  rise  of  science,  yet  no  void  has  been  left,  for  the  reason 
that  science  has  brought  to  light  innumerable  uniformities  in 
natural  phenomena.  In  fact,  science  has  increased  the  sum 
of  faith  in  the  objective  order,  and  at  the  same  time  has  expanded 
the  sphere  of  religious  feeling.  It  is  only  when  the  impersonal 
attitude  of  science  is  assumed  toward  all  the  departments  of  life 
that  human  faith,  which  finds  its  most  adequate  expression  in 
religious  faith,  is  on  the  way  to  extinction.  The  skepticism 
which  is  present  in  a  decadent  civilization,  is  the  result  not  so 
much  of  its  science  and  philosophy,  as  the  moral  disorder  of  the 
social  life,  which  makes  the  individual  mind  the  theater  of  dis- 
cordant and  distracting  impulses.  Individual  or  social  faith  is 
but  an  expression  of  life,  after  all.  An  harmonious,  expansive 
life  has  an  abounding  faith  in  the  essential  truth  and  goodness 
of  the  world,  while  a  life  tormented  by  conflicting  passions 
accepts  the  same  order  with  misgiving  and  doubt. ^  But  at  the 
same  time  faith  reacts  upon  life  to  expand  or  contract  it.  A 
people  outgrows  some  of  its  beliefs,  just  as  an  individual  does. 
Many  beliefs  which  at  one  time  in  the  history  of  a  culture  were 
real  organizing  forces,  come  later  to  be  obstacles  to  progress.  The 
belief  in  the  divine  right  of  kings,  by  the  halo  with  which  it 
surrounded  the  regal  head  and  the  obedience  it  inspired,  was  a 
powerful  cementing  political  force  in  the  more  unenlightened 
periods  of  social  development,  but  the  conception  was  certainly 
obstructive  in  French  history  at  the  time  of  Louis  XIV,  when 
impulses  of  democracy  were  beginning  to  express  themselves 
that  were  later  lashed  into  the  fury  of  the  Revolution  by  the 
stubborn  resistance  which  they  encountered.  So  monasticism, 
though  it  did  noble  service  in  bringing  hope  and  consolation  to 

^  See  Paulsen:  A  System  of  EthicSy  p.  421  fF;  also  James:   Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience,  p.  41. 


20  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

minds  distracted  by  the  confusion  and  disorder  following  the 
fall  of  Rome,  was  too  narrow  for  the  new  life  of  the  Renaissance. 
In  a  similar  way  the  political  and  economic  conceptions  had  to 
expand  in  order  to  compass  the  new  social  vitality  in  European 
life  produced  by  the  discovery  of  the  possibilities  of  the  New 
World. 

The  tendency  of  social  development  is  to  make  the  sphere  of 
desire  and  belief  coincident.  Every  desire  which  remains  unsat- 
isfied, that  is,  detached  from  the  affirmation  of  the  means  of 
satisfaction,  soon  dies,  as,  on  the  other  hand,  no  belief  acquires 
a  permanent  social  ascendancy,  which  is  not  intimately  con- 
nected with  the  needs  of  humanity. 

C.  Desire  and  Belief  in  Relation  to  the  Will. 

10.  Desire  and  belief  are  brought  into  systematic  coordina- 
tion through  the  activity  of  the  will.  Many  desires  and  the 
corresponding  beliefs  are  different  phases  of  the  same  total 
psychic  process  in  which  impulsive  acts  become  purposive 
through  the  effects  of  memory.  Other  desires  and  beliefs  are 
independent  of  each  other  in  origin  except  in  so  far  as  they  have 
a  general  connection  in  the  same  will  or  personality,  and  are 
brought  into  coordination  through  apperception.  It  is  in  the 
activity  of  the  will  that  consciousness  alters  its  contents  in  a 
definite  direction.  Out  of  the  ideational  and  affective  experi- 
ence connected  with  such  control  arises  the  notion  and  feeling 
of  self.  As  a  result,  desire  and  belief,  through  their  intercon- 
nection in  volitional  processes,  stand  in  intimate  relation  to  the 
self.  The  universe  of  desire  represents  "recognition  in  feeling 
of  the  distinction  between  the  actual  and  the  unreaHzed  self,"^ 
while  the  universe  of  belief  stands  for  the  habitual  attitude  of  the 
self  in  affirming  or  denying  the  possibiHty  of  realizing  desires. 
The  unification  of  desire  and  belief  through  the  activity  of  the 
theoretical  or  practical  will,  is  eminently  a  social  process.  Those 
phases  of  experience  which  are  not  directly  modified  by  the  will 
form  a  total  which  the  mind  regards  as  independent  of  itself :  while 

^  Dewey:  Psychology,  p.  364. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  21 

the  Other  phases  subject  to  volitional  control,  form  the  contrasting 
total  of  the  self.   Now  in  the  early  history  of  civilization,  the  separ- 
ation of  self  and  object  is  imperfect  both  in  thought  and  feeling: 
the  increased  cooperation  of  individual  wills  which  comes  with 
social  experience  widens  the  sphere  of  sensible  experience  on  the 
one  hand  and  on  the  other  the  sphere  of  internal  experience  con- 
nected with  self-activity.    The  final  result  is  th  at  complete  detach- 
ment in  thought  and  feeling  of  the  self  from  the  manifold  of 
perceptual  experience,  which  is  seen  in  its  best  estate  in  the 
scientific  consciousness.    Out  of  the  internal  experience  develops 
not  an  isolated  personality,  but  a  consciousness  of  a  plurality  of 
like  selves,  sharing  a  common  life  of  thought,  feeling  and  action. 
II.     The  external  expression  of  the  social  will  is  the  activity 
of  social  life.    Individual  wills  are  linked  in  associations  of  vari- 
ous degrees  of  complexity,  each  association   having   interests, 
desires  and  beliefs,  in  a  word,  a  life  peculiar  to  itself.    Within 
each  group  of  individual  wills  are  to  be  found  common  motives 
to  volition,  with  the  result  that  group  ends  are  achieved  in  a 
more  or  less  rational  way.     Individual  wills  are  not,  however, 
of  equal  importance  in  the  organization  of  motives.     Within 
certain  limits  the  statement  is  true  that  the  greater  the  number 
of  individual  wills  interacting  the  less  deliberative,  the  less 
rational,  the  resulting  action.    The  final  expression  of  a  great 
conception  is  as  a  rule  the  work  of  a  few  minds;  the  organization 
of  this  into  a  social  impulse  is  partly  the  work  of  suggestion  and 
partly  of  choice.    Some  writers,  like  Le  Bon,  seem  to  imply  that 
a  collective  mind  really  exists  only  at  the  moment  when  a  group 
of  individual  minds  are  simultaneously  affecting  each  other  as 
in  a  crowd.    We  do  not  restrict  the  individual  will  to  the  complex 
of  ideas  and  feelings  that  happen  to  be  above  the  threshold  of 
attention  at  a  particular  instant:  and  in  an  analogous  way,  there 
seems  to  be  no  good  reason  for  restricting  the  social  will  to  the 
sum  of  ideas  and  feelings  appearing  simultaneously  in  a  group 
of  interacting  minds. 

12.  While  impassioned  discussion  upsets  for  the  time  being 
all  rational  deliberation,  nevertheless  more  temperate  discussion 
enables  the  individual  to  get  glimpses  of  new  and  important 
aspects  of  a  subject  which  will  assist  him  in  the  calm  of  his 


22  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

.'private  moments  to  reach  a  more  satisfactory  solution  of  the 
problem.  While  social  deliberation  does  not  attain  the  degree 
of  rationality  and  control  which  the  processes  of  thought  in  a 
highly  endowed  individual  mind  possess,  yet  it  is  far  from 
receiving  justice  at  the  hands  of  the  theory  of  suggestion.^  The 
most  transcendent  genius  is  connected  through  a  graduated 
series  of  capacities  to  the  average  mediocrity,  so  that  the  organi- 
zation of  public  opinion  is  by  no  means  a  process  consisting 
first  of  all  in  the  invention  of  an  idea  by  one  supreme  mind,  and 
the  subsequent  incorporation  of  this  idea  in  other  minds  by  mere 
association.  Frequently  the  acceptance  of  an  idea  appears  to 
be  automatic,  when  in  reality  the  acceptance  of  the  idea  marks 
the  completion  of  a  mental  process  whose  development  involved 
complex  apperceptive  activities.  Still  it  remains  true  that  col- 
lective thinking  is  in  general  less  controlled  than  individual 
thinking.  An  idea  which  has  been  perfected  in  one  mind  can- 
not be  communicated  in  its  final  form  to  another  mind;  the 
second  mind  must  repeat  to  some  extent  the  process  of  develop- 
ment which  the  idea  underwent  in  the  first  mind,  and  in  so 
doing  gives  some  play  to  association  to  bring  in  irrelevant  ideas. 
Today  natural  selection  is  a  datum  in  reasoning  on  biological 
matters;  yet  a  quarter  of  a  century  nearly  passed  before  the 
idea  became  appercipient  in  the  collective  mind  of  biologists. 
So  far  as  the  net  gain  in  positive  knowledge  is  concerned,  much 
of  the  thinking  and  feeling  of  that  period  was  sheer  waste  of 
mental  energy.  The  collective  thinking  of  society  would  be  far 
less  efficient  than  that  of  a  single  mind,  were  it  not  that  a  multi- 
pHcity  of  cooperating  minds  permits  a  division  of  mental  labor. 
This  division  extends  to  all  phases  of  the  collective  mental  life. 
Society  has  as  its  disposal  a  vast  fund  of  knowledge  which  it 
turns  to  account  through  various  associations,  each  of  which  has 
more  or  less  clearly  defined  aims  and  within  the  limits  of  these 
aims  a  will  of  its  own.  That  is  to  say,  the  various  associations 
have  a  range  of  motives  outside  of  which  choice  cannot  be  made 
without  its  prescribed  character  being  violated.  But  with  one 
exception,  the  state,  the  range  of  motives  is   far  from  being 

^  See  Baldwin:  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  ch.  vi,  Sec.  5.   Also  Gid- 
dings:  Principles  of  Sociology,  ed.  of  1896.  150  fF. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  23 

exhaustive.  The  social  will  expressed  in  the  state  is  free  in  the 
sense  that  the  only  limit  to  the  range  of  motives  v^hich  actuate 
it  is  its  own  psychic  constitution,  and  in  the  further  sense  that 
it  is  capable  of  making  a  rational  choice  of  motives.  That  the 
social  will  exerts  a  directive  force  is  unmistakable.  The  state 
has  made  notable  achievement  in  the  domain  of  education, 
industry  and  politics :  and  the  part  which  it  is  destined  to  play 
in  the  future  gives  fair  promise  of  being  greater  than  in  the  past. 
Mr.  James  Bryce  puts  the  matter  fairly  when  he  says : 

"  Modern  civilization,  in  becoming  more  complex  and  refined, 
has  become  more  exacting.  It  discerns  more  benefits  which 
the  organized  power  o/  government  can  secure,  and  grows  more 
anxious  to  attain  them.  Men  live  fast,  and  are  impatient  of  the 
slow  working  of  natural  laws.  The  triumphs  of  physical  sci- 
ence have  enlarged  their  desires  for  comfort,  and  have  shown 
them  how  many  things  may  be  accomplished  by  the  application 
of  collective  skill  and  large  funds  which  are  beyond  the  reach 
of  individual  effort."^ 

13.  The  ends  of  the  state  are  thus  more  comprehensive  than 
those  of  any  other  association;  while  the  autonomy  of  its  will 
and  the  indefinite  range  of  its  motives  give  it  a  unique  psychic 
character.  The  state  reflects  upon  its  past  and  plans  for  remote 
future  ends.  It  has  one  supreme  end,  the  welfare  of  society, 
which  it  strives  to  attain  through  a  series  of  particular  volitions, 
in  which  it  evaluates,  to  some  degree,  its  motives  according  to 
the  mode  in  which  they  modify  its  character.  The  voluntary 
control  exercised  by  associations  within  the  state  is  chiefly  pru- 
dential; the  choice  of  motives  being  largely  made  from  the 
standpoint  of  interest  or  advantage.  These  associations  seldom 
scrutinize  their  motives  from  a  moral  point  of  view;  such 
evaluation  as  they  do  make,  is  limited  to  those  negative  cases 
in  which  some  question  arises  as  to  the  prescribed  (legal)  limits 
of  their  authority.  The  individual  will  may  be  subordinated^' 
to  a  number  of  partial  or  group-wills;  but  as  a  rule  there  is  one 
particular  group-will  in  which  this  subordination  is  completest^ 
This  corresponds  to  the  dominant  universe  of  the  individual 

*  American  Commonwealth ^  3d  ed.,  vol.  ii,  p.  539. 


EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 


mind.  But  to  each  social  group  to  which  the  individual  sus- 
tains organic  relations  there  is  a  related  universe  of  desire  and 
belief,  forming  a  small  social  world  within  itself.  When  the 
individual  will  comes  into  relation  with  the  total  will  of  society, 
the  point  of  contact  is  in  some  one  of  these  particular  universes; 
or,  in  other  words,  the  contact  is  not  between  individuals  as 
members  of  society  in  its  entirety,  but  between  individuals  as 
members  of  the  same  or  different  particular  groups.  At  the 
same  time  the  desires  and  volitions  of  the  various  social  groups 
are  subordinated  to  a  still  higher  psychic  unity,  the  personality 
of  society. 

14.  That  the  concept  of  a  social  personality  stands  for  a 
reality  is  evident  from  a  variety  of  considerations.  If  we  take 
an  historic  survey  of  the  mental  life  of  a  people,  we  invariably 
find  in  the  existing  fabric  of  its  civilization  elements  coming 
from  a  remote  past.  Its  religious,  moral  and  political  beliefs 
have  resulted  from  the  combined  thought,  feeling  and  action  of 
many  generations.  Thus  a  civilization  is  a  psychic  synthesis  of 
the  past  experiences  of  a  society.  While  the  civilizations  of  the 
earth  have  many  broad  traits  in  common,  yet  each  has  a  content 
and  organization  peculiar  to  itself,  forming  a  genius  or  tempera- 
ment that  binds  into  a  delicate  unity  the  most  diverse  products 
of  its  activity.  These  differences  of  national  genius  are  not 
things  of  a  day  merely,  but  characterize  a  nation  throughout  its 
growth  and  decay.  The  social  mind  has  a  character  or  dispo- 
sition as  truly  as  the  individual  mind,  founded  upon  certain 
fundamental  desires  and  beliefs  and  correlative  modes  of  action. 
They  are  the  elements  which  give  stability  to  the  psychic  life 
of  society.  They  are  of  course  rooted  in  the  habits  of  the  indi- 
vidual personality.  A  certain  way  of  thinking  and  acting  spreads 
through  a  community;  repeated  again  and  again,  it  becomes 
a  mechanized  process  whose  unfoldment  is  more  or  less  indepen- 
dent of  attention.  The  mechanization  of  the  original  attentive 
process  has  been  effected  through  social  discipline,  and  for  this 
reason  there  is  an  interconnection  of  individual  dispositions  in 
a  wider  mechanism  which  we  may  fitly  term  the  social  disposi- 
tion. But  these  mechanized  processes  possess  something  higher 
than  a  merely  vital  or  biological  significance,  even  in  the  stage 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  25 

of  complete  formation,  because  as  Stout  remarks,  they  "may 
enter  as  component  parts  into  a  total  process  which  as  a  whole 
is  very  far  from  being  automatic.  The  inverse  of  this  is  seen  in 
habits  of  thinking  and  willing.  Here  a  comprehensive  habitual 
tendency  realizes  itself  on  special  occasions  by  means  of  special 
processes  which  are  not  habitual."^  Hence  it  is  that  social  habit 
is  never  a  closed  automatic  series  functioning  independently  of 
the  will,  and  that  custom,  the  external  expression  of  the  social 
disposition,  never  sinks  to  the  level  of  instinctive  control. 

15.  The  extent  to  which  habitual  tendencies  enter  into  the 
volitional  acts  of  a  community  varies  with  the  stage  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  despotism  of  custom  in  the  period  of  primitive  cul- 
ture is  a  notorious  fact.  Habit  then  forms  the  chief  ingredient 
of  motives,  while  at  the  same  time  the  range  of  individual 
variation  in  habit  is  narrow.  Contiguous  adhesion  plays  an 
important  part  in  the  unfoldment  of  volitional  processes.  In 
this  stage  of  mental  development  the  individual  will  does  not 
organize  experiences  into  complex  apperceptive  systems,  and 
thus  return  to  modify  the  social  will  in  a  serious  way.  With  the 
growth  of  civilization,  the  range  of  variation  in  habit  is  increased; 
habits  are  multiplied,  but  at  the  same  time,  as  already  noted, 
they  function  in  processes  having  a  degree  of  conscious  control. 
The  development  of  the  social  will  involves  at  the  same  time 
the  differentiation  of  the  individual  will;  so  that  in  a  state  of 
advanced  culture,  the  individual  will  functions  in  some  ways 
as  a  tendency  more  or  less  complete  in  itself.  Here  the  indi- 
vidual will  has  certain  ends  and  purposes  which  are  purely 
personal,  as  in  particular  interests  relating  to  private  property. 
As  a  complex  social  environment  requires  the  readaptation  of 
volitional  processes  to  new  circumstances,  some  component 
parts  whose  unfoldment  was  previously  more  or  less  automatic, 
now  demand  attention,  and  in  consequence  become  to  some 
extent  independent  volitions,  so  that  in  this  way  a  continuous 
enlargement  as  well  as  particularization  of  the  universe  of 
motives  goes  on.  The  individualization  is  not  to  be  conceived, 
however,  as  the  segregation  of  some  particular  will  from  the 
whole  social  will,  but  as  the  infoldment  of  the  social  will,  out 

^  Analytical  Psychology,  vol.  i,  p.  262. 


26  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAT  DEN, 

of  which  arises  a  number  of  reciprocally  limiting  and  partial 
wills,  externally  manifest  in  the  corresponding  lives  of  the  social 
groups  concerned.  The  extent  to  which  the  infoldment  modifies 
preexisting  social  habits  varies  with  the  different  social  groups 
and  with  the  habits  themselves.  Some  groups  retain  more  than 
others  the  character  of  the  primordial  society,  while  some  habits 
are  but  slightly  modified  in  any  of  the  social  groups.  The 
latter  are  the  basis  of  the  national  culture,  forming  the  stable 
elements  of  the  social  personality  which  enable  it  to  withstand 
the  profound  shocks  of  political  revolutions. 

1 6.  When  the  growth  of  civilization  has  reached  a  stage  in 
I  which  the  individual  will  is  enabled  to  organize  social  experi- 
ences in  a  manner  peculiar  to  itself,  volitions  may  then  speedily 
mature  in  a  single  mind  and  spread  to  the  other  minds  of  the 
community.  Such  volitions  are  in  relation  to  the  entire  history 
of  a  culture  somewhat  ephemeral.  They  are  produced  by  a 
mental  activity  which,  to  a  considerable  extent,  operates  inde- 
pendently ofthe  apperceptive  control  exercised  bythe  permanent 
beliefs  of  the  race.  They  gain  a  temporary  ascendency  owing 
to  the  action  of  highly  special  and  accidental  causes;  but  they 
do  not  persist  for  any  length  of  time,  not  because  they  lack 
cohesion  of  parts,  but  because  springing  up  at  various  parts  of 
the  social  medium,  they  act  as  mutually  inhibiting  motives  in 
the  social  mind.  A  general  condition  which  favors  the  appear- 
ance of  these  transitory  beliefs  is  a  skepticism  resulting  from 
the  weakening  of  old  beliefs.  In  a  period  of  social  anarchy,  the 
times  are  rife,  owing  to  the  excited  condition  ofthe  public  mind, 
with  a  multitude  of  beliefs,  "which  appear  first  here  and  then 
there,  only  to  disappear,  until  the  advent  of  some  clear  formula 
or  some  suitable  mechanism  which  throws  all  the  others  into  the 
background  and  which  serves  thenceforward  as  the  fixed  basis 
for  future  improvements  and  developments."^  We  have  here 
an  instance  of  the  general  law  of  apperception  that  when  for 
any  reason  the  systematic  control  exercised  by  any  mental  sys- 
tem is  temporarily  suspended,  the  forces  of  association  may 
come  into  play  to  fill  the  mind  with  a  multitude  of  disconnected 
ideas  until  some  new  system  supervenes.    These  unstable  beliefs 

*Tarde:  op.  cit.y  p.  14F. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  27 

function  as  more  or  less  independent  units.  If  they  have  strong 
affective  components,  they  act  with  great  vigor  and  energy, 
and  thus  set  going  external  events  that  destroy  the  condition  of 
their  existence.  They  are  thus  Hkely  to  pass  into  action  at  once 
though  a  long  course  of  action  is  out  of  the  question.  We  have 
a  record  of  their  work  in  the  violent,  turbulent  periods  of  history. 
But  extreme  mobility  of  opinion  is  possible  only  as  the  terminal 
phase  in  the  mental  evolution  of  a  people,  in  which  the  founda- 
tions for  a  civilization  and  a  national  culture  have  been  laid 
in  the  ground-work  of  a  few  fixed  beliefs. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    SYSTEMATIZATION   OF    BELIEF. 

I.  In  the  early  history  of  the  social  mind  the  apperceptive 
control  is  relatively  simple,  association  or  contiguous  adhesion 
being  the  chief  form  of  the  interconnection  of  psychic  processes. 
The  lax  interdependence  of  associative  systems  makes  it  possible 
for  somewhat  contradictory  beliefs  to  be  held.  The  absence  of 
unifying  principles  of  experience  permits  an  indefinite  extension 
of  associative  systems  through  mere  accretion;  so  that  v^e  find 
in  the  history  of  the  human  mind  a  period  whose  most  salient 
feature  is  the  accumulation  rather  than  the  systematization  of 
belief.  There  is,  however,  an  evident  limit  to  the  extension  of 
belief,  notwithstanding  a  freedom  from  apperceptive  restraint, 
viz.,  the  uninventiveness  of  the  primitive  mind.  There  is  too 
much  solidarity  of  the  individual  and  social  will  in  the  early 
stages  of  civilization  for  the  former  to  elaborate  social  experi- 
ences in  a  fashion  peculiar  to  itself;  but  the  very  conditions 
which  free  the  individual  will  at  the  same  time  extend  the  sphere 
of  apperceptive  control.  The  creations  of  the  developed  indi- 
vidual will  are  notably  more  numerous  and  at  the  same  time 
more  coherent  than  those  of  the  primitive  will.  Early  inventions 
are  largely  modifications  of  memory  contents;  later  inventions 
are  a  combination  of  the  elements  of  experience  under  the 
motive  of  a  purpose  or  end.  The  latter  involve  a  more  detailed 
analysis  of  experience  and  a  more  comprehensive  and  systematic 
synthesis  of  its  elements. 

2.  (a)  The  mental  systems  into  which  historic  experiences 
are  organized,  are  never  in  the  social  consciousness  in  their 
fullness  at  one  time.  A  system  is  able  to  exert  an  influence  on 
the  stream  of  consciousness  without  the  necessity  of  its  parts 
being  explicit,  i.  e.,  it  may  act  as  a  total  tendency  from  the  fact 
that  there  is  a  common  trend  in  all  its  parts.  Much  of  the  social 
control  existing  before  the  collective  mind  has  reached  a  high 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  29 

degree  of  self-consciousness,  is  in  mental  systems,  the  funda- 
mental unities  of  which  in  the  ordinary  run  of  things  remain 
largely  implicit.  But  when  new  conditions  confront  society, 
the  likelihood  exists  that  the  various  parts  of  a  mental  system 
are  not  excited  with  equal  force  owing  to  the  unusual  modes  of 
stimulation,  and  as  a  result  some,  perhaps  all,  of  the  parts  become 
explicit.  Times  of  profound  political  'disturbances  are  preemi- 
nently the  periods  in  the  history  of  a  nation  when  social  dispo- 
sitions are  unfolded  through  the  excitation  of  their  components. 
The  unfoldment  may  at  times  be  violent,  but  even  then  the 
fundamental  beliefs  of  the  race  come  in  to  give  a  more  or  less 
definite  trend  to  the  outburst. 

2.  {h)  The  systematization  of  belief  means  in  its  individual 
aspect  the  specialization  of  the  universe  of  intercourse.  As  the 
interaction  of  mental  systems  becomes  more  definite  in  the  indi- 
vidual mind,  so  the  interaction  of  individual  minds  becomes  cor- 
respondingly more  controlled.  The  fundamental  systems  into 
which  social  experience  becomes  in  the  course  of  time  organized, 
display  certain  special  tendencies  which  they  did  not  have  in 
earlier  times,  although  they  remain  interconnected  in  the  gen- 
eral mental  fabric  of  the  civilization.  Thus  in  the  modern 
secular  state,  we  find  changes  in  political  ideas  spreading 
through  society  without  involving  to  any  serious  extent  the 
religious  beliefs;  while  in  the  old  Hebrew  theocracy,  religious 
ideas  were  so  closely  interwoven  with  political,  that  the  utter- 
ances of  the  prophets  as  the  acknowledged  oracles  of  God, 
seriously  modified  at  times  the  affairs  of  state.  To  each  of  these 
fundamental  systems  of  belief  corresponds  a  conative  tendency 
of  the  social  will.  The  transference  of  an  idea  or  mental  element 
from  one  mental  system  to  another  frequently  occurs  in  the 
history  of  a  culture.  Men's  views  of  the  world  and  life  change: 
which  means  not  so  much  that  the  facts  of  common  experience 
are  different  as  that  the  mental  systems  into  which  they  are 
incorporated  are  different.  But  a  belief  cannot  function  in  two 
distinct  mental  systems  at  the  same  time.  The  aesthetic  attitude 
toward  an  impression  is  incompatible  at  the  time  of  its  existence 
with  the  scientific.  Social  beliefs  are  coordinated  through  their 
interconnection  in  the  social  personality;  but  when  this  coordi- 


30  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

nation  is  disturbed,  the  ascendency  and  isolated  action  of  one 
system  ensues.  Under  such  circumstances  the  belief  is  likely 
to  incite  acts  which  the  interconnection  of  the  belief  had  pre- 
viously inhibited.  In  this  way  social  indignation  acting  inde- 
pendent of  legal  sentiment  may  result  in  the  avenging  of  wrong 
through  mob-violence;  so,  too,  religious  zeal,  freed  from  other 
social  emotions,  may  result  in  a  fanaticism  that  counts  its 
victims  by  the  score.  On  the  other  hand  the  union  of  indepen- 
dent systems  restricts  each  in  a  manner  corresponding  with  the 
principle  of  combination,  as  we  see  in  the  modification  of  the 
political  ideas  and  institutions  of  a  state  when  it  is  united  with 
others  in  an  empire. 

3.  There  are  two  widely  contrasted  types  of  mental  sys- 
tems. In  one  the  unfoldment  depends  upon  contiguous  adhe- 
sion, i.  e.,  a  given  fact  emerges  into  consciousness  largely  through 
its  dependence  upon  the  immediately  preceding  facts.  In  the 
other  there  is  a  central  principle  of  control :  a  part  emerges  not 
because  of  its  relation  to  the  preceding  part  alone,  but  to  all 
other  parts  of  the  system  as  well.  Where  there  is  such  solidar- 
ity in  the  interaction  of  the  individual  wills  that  any  one  of 
them  but  slightly  changes  the  collective  activity,  such  changes 
as  do  occur  in  the  social  mind  are  largely  associative.  Associa- 
tional  changes  stretch  over  psychic  processes  ranging  from 
sense-perceptions  to  the  interconnection  of  mental  objects  in  a 
temporal  process.  Modification  of  sense  perceptions  have  an 
indirect  interest  to  the  social  psychologist  in  the  fact  that  the 
sensory  product  may  be  combined  along  with  other  ideas  through 
memory  in  a  belief.  Thus  illusions  acquire  special  significance 
if  they  become  incorporated  in  a  mythological  system.  Of  direct 
importance  are  the  changes  occurring  in  a  temporal  succession 
of  ideas.  One  of  the  factors  at  work  is  the  natural  efFacement 
which  mental  objects  undergo  through  the  failure  of  memory. 
Details  are  forgotten,  only  certain  features  remaining  permanent 
mental  possessions.  The  permanence  of  an  impression  depends 
not  only  upon  certain  qualities  of  its  own,  but  upon  a  group  of 
highly  variable  subjective  conditions.  As  a  result  there  is  an 
uneven  fading  in  the  contents  of  a  memory  process,  with  the 
result  that  reproduction  is  always  an  imperfect  reinstatement 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  3 1 

of  the  experience.  An  associative  system  may  thus  break  up 
passively  through  internal  dissolution  into  its  component  parts, 
v^hich  then  become  attached  again  through  association  to  other 
systems.  A  similar  phenomenon  is  observed  in  the  social  mind. 
Distinct  streams  of  thought  become  confluent  in  the  course  of 
history  when  the  circumstances  of  their  origin  are  forgotten. 
A  striking  historic  personality  serves  as  a  center  of  attraction  for 
myths  and  legends  derived  from  independent  sources.  Another 
source  of  unconscious  modification  is  found  in  the  role  which 
associative  systems  frequently  play  in  being  parts  of  a  more 
comprehensive  system  which  as  a  whole  is  apperceptive.  We 
may  take  in  illustration  of  this  what  Wundt  calls  "the  change 
of  purpose  in  custom."^  Speaking  of  the  funeral  feast  he  says: 
"In  its  earliest  form  the  funeral  feast  is  a  sacrificial  feast. 
Primitive  man  offers  sacrifices  to  the  gods  at  every  important 
occasion  of  his  life,  and  will  certainly  make  an  offering  at  the 
burial  of  a  kinsman.  In  part  he  desires  to  obtain  the  divine 
favor  for  his  dead,  but  in  part — and  this  is  probably  the  more 
ancient  idea  of  the  two — the  dead  man  is  himself  an  object  of 
worship.  ...  A  second  motive,  which  came  into  oper- 
ation at  a  later  date,  but  may  gradually  have  ousted  the  original 
worship  of  the  dead,  lies  in  the  symbolic  meaning  of  a  feast 
eaten  in  common.  The  common  enjoyment  of  meat  and  drink 
is  for  primitive  man  a  religious  symbol  of  brotherhood;  more 
especially  if  the  feast  have  anything  of  solemnity  about  it,  if  it 
be  sanctioned,  so  to  speak,  by  the  presence  of  the  gods. 
It  is  this  final  form  of  the  funeral  feast  whose  traces  have  been 
longest  preserved.  With  its  passage  from  a  sensible  to  a  sym- 
bolic meaning  it  has  gradually  lost  its  religious  reference.  The 
funeral  feast,  that  is,  becomes  simply  a  commemorative  feast, 
at  which  mention  is  made  in  conversation  and  discourse  of  the 
virtues  of  the  dead."  The  changes  in  the  feelings  and  ideas 
which  were  associated  with  the  given  custom  are  unintentional 
modifications  brought  about  by  the  confluence  of  mental  sys- 
tems. The  funeral  feast  and  the  commemorative  feast  were  alike 
in  this  respect,  that  in  both  there  was  the  enjoyment  of  meat 
and  drink  in  common;  and  in  consequence  of  this  likeness  it 

^  Ethicsy  vol.  i,  p.  139  ff. 


32  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAYDEN. 

was  but  natural  that  the  funeral  feast  should  attract  to  itself 
the  feelings  and  sentiments  associated  with  the  commemorative 
feast. 

4.  In  apperception  the  changes  produced  in  consciousness 
take  place  in  a  state  of  attention  according  to  some  motive 
which  controls  and  preconditions  the  change.  Society  adjusts 
itself  to  new  conditions  by  the  conscious  adaptation  of  old  stores 
of  knowledge.  The  adaptation  is  generally  effected  first  at  one 
center  and  then  spreads  throughout  the  social  medium.  Social 
theory  which  finds  in  the  interaction  of  individual  minds  the 
essential  phenomena  of  hypnotism  only,  is  inclined  to  draw  a 
radical  distinction  between  the  mental  processes  going  on  at  the 
social  center  where  the  adaptation  is  first  effected  and  the  men- 
tal processes  going  on  at  the  centers  which  repeat  this  adapta- 
tion. The  first  have  been  dignified  by  the  name  of  invention 
while  the  latter  have  been  forced  to  acknowledge  the  impeach- 
ment of  mediocrity  in  the  name  of  imitation.  Now  the  dis- 
tinction is  of  profound  importance  for  a  theory  of  social  progress 
which  is  directly  concerned  with  mental  products,  but  is  of  less 
importance  for  social  psychology,  which  aims  to  study  the 
interconnection  of  individual  mental  processes  in  collective  men- 
tal processes.  Invention  marks  the  termination  of  an  apper- 
ceptive process  in  which  a  determinate  psychic  compound, 
image  or  conception  is  produced.  In  imitation  an  image  is 
communicated  to  the  mind  in  a  more  or  less  completed  form. 
Through  whatever  medium  the  communication  occurs  we  have 
contiguous  association  between  the  verbal  symbols  and  mental 
systems,  by  means  of  which  certain  mental  systems  are  brought 
into  conjunction  that  would  have  forever  remained  isolated  in 
that  particular  mind.  In  this  way  association  can  be  of  material 
assistance  in  producing  favorable  conditions  for  an  apperceptive 
action  between  two  mental  systems:  but  its  action  can  extend 
to  nothing  beyond  bringing  the  two  systems  together  in  con- 
sciousness, and  exciting  the  partial  system  upon  which  apper- 
ceptive interaction  depends.  If  the  mental  systems  are  relatively 
simple,  the  apperception  is  of  the  ordinary  degree  of  complexity; 
so  that  to  superficial  observation  nothing  seems  to  be  involved 
beyond  the  mere  lodgment  of  a  communicated  idea  in  the  par- 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  33 

ticular  mind.  Now  in  invention  the  same  two  features  of  asso- 
ciation and  apperception  are  at  work,  though  not  in  the  same 
relative  proportion.  In  invention  the  conjunction  of  mental 
systems  is  less  externally  determined  by  social  suggestion,  while 
the  interaction  is  likely  to  be  more  prolonged  and  persistent. 
Invention  implies  more  comprehensive  mental  systems  and  more 
sustained  attentional  control.  But  there  is  no  case  of  invention 
in  which  social  contact,  or  what  this  amounts  to,  psychologically 
speaking,  viz,  association,  has  not  played  an  important  part. 
The  history  of  the  theory  of  natural  selection  sheds  considerable 
light  upon  the  psychology  of  invention.  I  take  the  following 
short  account  from  Morgan '}  "Charles  Darwin  and  Dr.  Alfred 
Russell  Wallace  both  reached  the  conception  of  Natural  Selec- 
tion on  reading  Malthus*s  work  on  Population.  Both  had 
acquired  a  system  of  knowledge  concerning  the  relationships  of 
animals  and  plants.  In  both  the  net  results  were  constantly  in 
mind.  As  they  ranged  in  thought  over  the  system,  now  one 
and  now  another  factor  was  in  the  focus  of  attention,  with  a 
rearrangement  of  the  other  factors  around  it.  They  read 
Malthus.  Unless  some  factor  in  the  Malthusian  universe  of 
discourse  coincided  or  was  congruous  with  some  factor  in  the 
universe  of  biological  thought,  the  two  could  not  come  into  fruit- 
ful relation.  But  there  was  a  mediating  factor  common  to  both 
— over-production  of  offspring.  There  were  other  features 
sufficiently  congruent  to  enable  the  Malthusian  discussion  to 
throw  light  on  the  problems  of  biology.  Hence  arose  the 
suggestion  ...  of  Natural  Selection  through  the  elimi- 
nation of  the  unfit.''  Here  social  suggestion  communicated 
to  the  minds  of  the  two  distinguished  naturalists  a  mental  system, 
which  was  combined  in  an  apperceptive  way  with  the  systems 
of  biologic  relationships  already  formed,  into  a  more  compre- 
hensive system  the  fundamental  unity  of  which  was  the  concept 
of  natural  selection.  But  the  same  mental  processes  are  involved 
in  the  humbler  achievements  of  everyday  life. 

5.  Owing  to  the  interconnection  of  individual  wills  in  a 
wider  volitional  process,  it  happens  that  a  change,  originating 
in  an  individual  mind,  spreads  through  the  social  medium  in 

^  Psychology  for  Teachers,  p.  87,  new  ed. 


34  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

some  determinate  fashion.  A  change  in  a  given  mental  system 
spreads  to  other  mental  systems  in  the  order  of  the  degree  of 
relatedness  of  the  latter  to  the  former.  In  so  far  as  the  mental 
systems  are  more  thoroughly  organized  in  the  minds  of  respec- 
tively different  social  groups,  we  have,  corresponding  to  the 
order  of  psychic  excitation,  an  order  in  the  modification  of  the 
^life  of  social  groups.  Social  changes  begin  as  changes  in  the 
idesires  and  beliefs  of  a  certain  group,  followed  by  like  mental 
changes  in  the  groups  whose  interests  are  most  closely  identified 
with  those  of  the  first.  But  to  the  extent  that  other  desires  and 
beliefs  happen  at  the  time  to  be  ascendant  in  the  minds  of  the 
other  social  groups,  the  disturbance  originating  in  the  mind  of 
the  first  group  meets  a  corresponding  resistance  to  its  spread. 
The  excitation  is  in  its  earlier  stages  of  a  general  nature  and 
becomes  more  specific  as  the  infoldment  proceeds.  Accordingly 
we  find  deep  social  changes  beginning  as  vague  mental  tenden- 
cies, which  are  nothing  more  than  feelings  of  unrest  and  dis- 
satisfaction with  some  existing  institution,  and  which  continue 
for  some  time  in  this  merely  negative  attitude  of  protest.  Later 
a  plan  emerges  that  seeks  to  remove  the  cause  of  dissatisfaction 
by  substituting  some  other  arrangement  that  will  realize  the 
needs  in  this  direction  in  a  better  manner.  The  plan  becomes 
a  motive  to  a  series  of  volitions  that  may  have  profound  and 
revolutionary  changes  as  a  consequence.  The  earlier  phases 
of  such  social  movements  involve  the  excitation  of  some  universe 
of  belief  in  its  entirety,  with  a  corresponding  indefiniteness  in 
the  reaction  of  the  social  will.  The  component  systems  of  the 
particular  universe  are  all  equally  aroused,  so  that  none  of  them 
can  become  appercipient  in  preference  to  another;  but  later  on 
one  of  these  gains  some  ascendency,  and  events  now  take  a 
definite  turn,  owing  to  the  resulting  univocal  nature  of  the 
motives  to  social  volition.  The  period  of  incubation  of  a  social 
movement  is  thus  one  in  which  component  mental  systems  of 
some  universe  of  beliefs  are  struggling  each  against  the  other 
to  become  explicit  in  the  public  mind.  The  issue  depends  upon 
a  variety  of  conditions,  which  lie  partly  in  the  mode  or  cir- 
cumstances of  stimulation  and  partly  in  the  nature  of  the 
mental  system  itself. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL. 


35 


6.  The  recency  of  its  activity  conditions  the  ascendancy  of 
a  mental  system.  A  system  out  of  use  is  undergoing  continual 
decay.  Soon  the  parts  begin  to  function  independent  of  each 
other,  and  to  restore  the  system  to  its  former  degree  of  efficiency 
requires  a  process  of  recollection  that  is  discursive  in  a  degree 
proportionate  to  the  time  during  which  the  system  has  been 
dormant.  A  mental  system  that  has  been  in  recent  action  may 
function  more  efficiently  than  one  v^hich  has  been  out  of  use  for 
some  time  although,  in  the  event  of  continued  disuse,  it  would 
soon  fall  into  a  greater  degree  of  incoherence  than  the  later 
system.  Besides  reproduction  of  an  incoherent  system  gener- 
ally brings  in  through  association  irrelevant  ideas  that  delay 
the  apperceptive  activity  of  the  system.  At  times  these  are 
incorporated  within  the  system,  as  already  noted  in  the  case 
where  memory  images  become  changed  into  images  of  the  imag- 
ination. An  interesting  example  of  how  recency  conditions 
the  efficiency  of  a  mental  system  is  given  in  the  memory  of  the 
late  seismic  disturbances.  The  news  of  the  South  American 
earthquake  brought  to  mind  in  even  considerable  detail,  the 
facts  of  the  California  disturbance,  but  only  vaguely  those  of 
the  Charleston. 

7.  Intensity  and  vividness  of  the  elements  of  a  mental  sys- 
tem are  important  conditions  of  its  strength.  It  is  chiefly  on 
account  of  the  intensity  and  vividness  of  its  elements  that  the 
world  of  sensible  experience  is  taken  to  be  the  ultimate  universe 
of  reality  and  that  the  creations  of  fancy  never  command  belief 
until  they  find  lodgment  in  the  memory  series.  Intense  and 
vivid  experiences  such  as  are  incident  to  political  revolutions 
are  more  deeply  engraved  on  the  social  memory,  although  the 
latter  have  been  repeated  many  times.  Ihering  advances  the 
proposition,  in  opposition  to  the  Savigny-Puchta  theory,  that 
all  great  legal  principles  have  been  established  by  what  he  calls 
the  "struggle  for  right."  Undoubtedly  the  intensity  of  the 
experiences  incident  to  a  struggle  in  which  some  legal  principle 
is  born,  is  an  important  factor  in  helping  to  maintain  the  asser- 
tion of  the  right  involved,  before  it  has  crystaUized  into  a  social 
sentiment.  Le  Bon  has  well  described  the  eflFect  which  startHng 
events  produce  on  the  public  mind:  "A  hundred  petty  crimes 


36  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

or  petty  accidents  will  not  strike  the  imagination  of  crowds  in 
the  least,  whereas  a  single  great  crime  or  a  single  great  accident  will 
profoundly  impress  them,  even  though  the  results  be  infinitely 
less  disastrous  than  those  of  the  hundred  small  accidents  put 
together.  .  .  .  The  probable  loss  of  a  transatlantic 
steamer  that  was  supposed,  in  the  absence  of  news,  to  have  gone 
down  in  mid-ocean,  profoundly  impressed  the  imagination  of  a 
crowd  for  a  whole  week.  Yet  official  statistics  show  that  850 
sailing  vessels  and  203  steamers  were  lost  in  the  year  1894  alone. 
The  crowd  was  never  for  a  moment  concerned  with  these  suc- 
cessive losses,  much  more  important  though  they  were  as  far 
as  regards  the  destruction  of  life  and  property,  than  the  loss  of 
the  Atlantic  liner  in  question  could  possibly  have  been."^ 

8.  The  support  which  a  mental  system  can  command  from 
the  other  systems  with  which  it  is  connected,  is  of  material 
assistance  in  the  maintenance  of  its  ascendency.  Now  we  have 
already  seen  how  association  may  bring  into  relation  two  mental 
systems  that  might  otherwise  remain  disconnected;  and  if  such 
conjunction  occurs  when  the  mind  is  especially  active,  the  two 
will  probably  unite  in  a  more  comprehensive  system  whose 
total  energy  is  greater  than  that  of  either.  Under  such  condi- 
tions a  given  mental  system,  with  its  associate,  in  their  joint 
activity,  can  effectually  oust  from  consciousness  another  system, 
although  considered  in  itself  it  may  have  less  inner  stability 
than  its  rival.  What  is  called  the  social  opportuneness  of  an 
idea  or  invention,  depends  upon  such  associative  conjunction. 
An  idea  that  is  harmonious  with  the  general  set  of  the  public 
mind,  rallies  to  its  support  a  whole  mental  array,  while  another 
idea,  equally  meritorious  but  lacking  such  support,  fails  to 
command  general  attention.  Not  that  the  mental  systems  are 
wanting  which  under  other  circumstances  would  yield  the  latter 
support,  but  that  for  the  time  being,  they  are  prevented  from 
acting.  With  a  change  of  ideas  in  the  public  mind,  the  defeated 
invention  may  later  gain  a  speedy  acceptance.  The  great 
leaders  of  mankind  have  well  understood  these  facts,  and  before 
trying  to  put  their  plans  into  execution,  have  either  waited  till 
times  became  ripe  through  the  natural  course  of  events,  or  have 

^  LeBon,  The  Crowd^  pp.  78-79,  London,  1900. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  37 

sought  by  direct  instruction  to  develop  in   the    public    mind, 
mental  systems  that  would  support  their  plans. 

9.  The  most  important  factor  in  institutional  heredity  is 
none  of  those  above  discussed,  but  another,  viz,  repetition — 
unceasing  repetition  with,  of  course,  full  command  of  attention. 
The  groundwork  of  a  civilization  is  a  few  fixed  beliefs  which 
have  been  thoroughly  wrought  into  the  mental  constitution  of 
a  people  by  incessant  repetition.  The  stress  which  has  been  laid 
upon  imitation  as  one  of  the  most  fundamental  facts  of  social 
life,  does  but  enforce  in  particular  words  the  importance  of 
repetition  in  giving  stability  to  the  ideas,  concepts  and  beliefs 
of  a  race.  Society  maintains  a  vast  disciplinary  agency  whose) 
sole  purpose  is  to  instill  into  the  minds  of  the  young  the  funda- 
mental facts  and  values  of  its  culture  as  data  upon  which  imme- 
diate  action  is  demanded.  In  this  routine  of  the  common,  oft- 
repeated  experiences,  lies  all  that  is  most  vital  to  the  welfare  of 
a  people.  Art  has  largely  drawn  its  themes  from  the  realms  of 
common  experience  and  in  this  fact  lies  its  suggestiveness. 
The  experiences  repeated  from  the  earliest  years  of  childhood, 
organize  into  mental  systems  that  require  a  minimum  of  stimu- 
lation to  arouse  them;  they  form  a  delicate  consensus  in  the 
way  of  a  sensitivity  to  the  genius  of  one's  civilization  which  a 
foreigner  never  fully  acquires. 

10.  The  degree  to  which  feelings  of  relationship  interpene- 
trate a  mental  system,  has  much  to  do  indetermining  its  strength. 
In  a  highly  organized  system,  each  part  reflects  and  supports 
the  other;  so  that  one  part  is  never  in  the  focus  of  attention 
without  there  being  an  excitation  to  some  extent  of  the  others. 
Owing  to  the  reciprocal  action  going  on  between  the  parts,  the 
system  is  kept  from  dissolving  and  in  readiness  to  function  as 
a  unit.  A  series  held  together  by  mere  contiguous  adhesion 
has  no  more  strength  as  a  total  system  than  the  weakest  bond 
existing  between  any  two  members;  nor  does  the  increase  in 
strength  in  the  connection  between  any  two  members  improve 
that  between  the  others.  On  the  other  hand,  in  a  system  which 
is  a  manifold  of  numerous  relations,  it  is  impossible  to  modify  the 
connection  of  any  two  parts  without  involving  the  others  to  an 
extent  proportionate  to  the  number  of  inner  relations.     The 


38  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

best  examples  of  these  systems  are  those  expressing  quantita- 
tive relations  as  mathematical  demonstrations,  mathematical 
theories  of  physical  phenomena,  etc.  The  theories  of  mathe- 
matical physics  may  fall  or  stand  with  a  single  fact,  there  being 
at  times  a  delicate  dependence  upon  quantitative  relations 
within  very  small  limits  of  error.  The  corpuscular  theory  of 
light  gives  an  admirable  general  explanation  of  refraction,  but 
fails  when  quantitative  relations  (the  index  of  refraction),  are 
taken  into  account. 

II.  In  general  we  may  divide  mental  systems  into  two  dis- 
tinct classes  so  far  as  their  cognitive  elements  are  concerned, 
the  group  of  perceptual  data  constituting  the  so-called  Tacts' 
of  a  science,  and  the  system  of  concepts  by  means  of  which  the 
mind  apprehends  the  facts.  The  concepts  are  in  reality  the 
laws  or  principles  of  the  particular  science.  Now  the  progress 
of  science  means  not  only  the  multiplication  and  more  exact 
determination  of  perceptual  data,  but  the  extension  and  deeper 
organization  of  theory  as  well.  While  the  theories  of  a  science 
are  conditioned  by  its  data,  theory  returns  to  condition  the 
discovery  of  new  facts;  for  as  science  develops,  the  discovery 
of  new  data  is  less  a  matter  of  accident,  and  more  a  matter  of 
rational  procedure  based  upon  existing  knowledge.  Notwith- 
standing the  intimate  relation  between  fact  and  theory,  their 
elaboration  represents  partially  independent  historic  movements: 
that  is  to  say,  the  accumulation  of  facts  may  go  on  for  a  consid- 
erable length  of  time  before  any  need  of  the  revision  of  hypothe- 
sis or  theory  is  felt,  just  as  a  further  improvement  of  a  theory 
is  possible  with  reference  to  the  sphere  of  existing  fact.  Both 
the  sphere  of  fact  and  theory  become  more  coherent  with  the 
progress  of  science.  A  fact  before  it  is  admitted  as  a  datum 
in  the  body  of  existing  knowledge  must  be  repeatedly  verified; 
while  a  theory  before  it  can  gain  an  ascendancy,  must  submit 
to  critical  experimentation  devised  for  the  specific  purpose  of 
testing  the  theory. 

12.  Conceptual  systems  are  not  however  limited  to  branches 
of  knowledge  with  which  the  idea  of  science  is  especially  con- 
nected. We  find  the  great  fund  of  social  knowledge,  religious, 
political,  economic,  arranged  in  more  or  less  articulate  schemes. 


THE    SOCIAL   WILL.  39 

based  upon  some  principle  or  concept.  Experience  combines 
into  systematic  totals  long  before  the  plan  of  combination 
becomes  explicit  in  the  public  mind.  In  such  cases  the  uni- 
versal elements  of  experience  do  not  exist  apart  from  the 
concrete  totals  whose  plan  of  combination  they  determine. 
What  is  termed  practical  sagacity  or  wisdom  consists  of  mental 
systems  organized  in  this  way.  Later  the  universal  elements 
are  disengaged  from  their  concrete  embodiments  and  are  explic- 
itly stated  in  rules.  We  find  for  instance  in  the  universality 
of  custom  the  operation  of  general  factors  or  tendencies  but 
dimly  comprehended,  which  emerge  later  in  special  moral 
precepts  of  the  practical  understanding  and  again  in  more 
fundamental  principles  of  ethical  science  in  the  way  of  certain 
norms.  In  the  sphere  of  industrial  activities,  at  times  new 
practices  spread  through  the  social  medium  by  the  imita- 
tion of  a  particular  model,  and  in  this  way  certain  general  fac- 
tors are  at  work,  causing  concrete  elements  to  combine  into 
similar  wholes.  Later  these  universal  factors  become  explicit  in  a 
new  concept  as  in  the  caseof  the  capital  concept  in  modern  times. 
While  the  multipHcation  of  concrete  social  acts  goes  on  with  the 
growth  of  civilization  and  the  increase  of  population,  the  num- 
ber of  distinct  universal  principles  serving  for  the  organization 
of  experience,  does  not  exceed  a  certain  small  number.  This 
universaHzing  activity  of  the  mind  corresponds  to  what  is,  objec- 
tively considered,  the  discovery  of  laws  of  greater  generality. 
In  truth,  within  any  sphere  of  fact  already  a  matter  of  social 
acquisition,  the  growth  of  culture  means  the  replacing  through 
combination  and  substitution  of  empirical  formulae  by  a  smaller 
number  of  laws  possessing  a  correspondingly  higher  generality. 
Progress  in  the  evolution  of  conceptual  systems  is  partly  a 
matter  of  combination  and  partly  a  matter  of  substitution. 
Many  theories  which  have  appeared  in  the  history  of  science 
are  mutually  exclusive;  others  have  resulted  from  the  synthesis 
of  empirical  generalizations  that  have  covered  partial  phases  of 
a  group  of  phenomena;  still  others  have  resulted  from  a  more 
precise  quantitative  statement  or  detailed  application  of  an  idea 
already  developed  in  its  general  features.  The  later  part  of  the 
history  of  events  that  led  up  to  the  discovery  of  the  Newtonian 


40  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

theory  of  gravitation  well  illustrates  the  progress  of  generaliza- 
tion through  the  combination  of  preceding  hypotheses;  while 
progress  through  substitution  is  seen  in  the  replacement  of  the 
corpuscular  theory  by  the  wave  theory  of  light.  Substitution 
then  occurs  in  the  case  of  theories  covering  the  same  range  of 
phenomena;  combination  occurs  where  theories  formulating  the 
order  in  the  component  parts  of  a  system,  are  united  in  one 
more  general  theory  valid  for  the  whole  system. 

13.  Conceptual  systems  comprehending  special  determina- 
tions and  having  numerous  inter-relations,  are  difficult  to  dis- 
place for  the  reason  that  the  mutual  excitation  of  parts  multi- 
plies the  amount  of  mental  energy  available  at  any  particular 

/moment.  But  too  high  articulateness  is  at  times  a  source  of 
weakness.  No  theory  ever  does  full  justice  to  the  facts,  which 
must  be  pruned  here  and  expanded  there  to  fit  into  the  ideal 
limits  of  a  formula.  It  thus  may  happen  that  a  theory  is  expressed 
with  too  much  mathematical  exactness,  and  gains  so  great  an 
ascendancy  over  the  mind  because  of  its  logical  symmetry 
that  really  significant  facts  are  ignored  or  transformed  by  such 
prepossession.  The  mental  system,  because  of  its  completeness 
resists  modification,  and  like  a  group  of  physical  particles  under 
high  internal  stress  may  fly  to  pieces  when  exposed  to  the  re- 
peated shocks  which  the  progress  of  discovery  causes.  A  lower 
degree  of  articulateness  at  times  insures  a  higher  degree  of 
of  vitality,  because  room  is  aflForded  for  growth  and  expansion. 
Nothing  enforces  this  point  better  than  the  inductive  philosophy 
associated  with  the  name  of  Darwin.  Stated  with  circumspec- 
tion and  a  manifest  desire  to  do  full  justice  to  all  the  facts  con- 
cerned, it  never  aimed  at  finalities  but  only  tendencies  highly 
probable,  with  the  result  that  it  has  quietly  assimilated  the 
facts  gathered  in  so  many  lines  during  the  last  half-century.  So, 
too,  in  Roman  and  English  law,  we  have  two  instances  of  legal 
systems  whose  universal  fitness  for  defining  the  rights  of  man, 
has  been  due  in  a  considerable  measure  to  the  absence  of  a 
certain  degree  of  logical  refinement. 

14.  The  spread  of  an  idea  through  the  social  medium  is 
ichecked  by  indiff^erence  or  opposition.  Where  there  is  lacking 
|the  mental  system  with  which  an  idea  has  some  points  in  con- 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  4 1 

tact,  it  fails  to  command  the  attention.  Scientific  conceptions 
which  formulate  highly  specialized  experience,  do  not  enjoy  a 
currency  beyond  a  small  social  group,  for  the  reason  that  in  the 
minds  of  the  generality,  the  mental  systems  are  wanting  which 
can  incorporate  the  idea.  Owing  to  the  superficial  contact  the 
mental  processes  aroused  by  the  idea  are  very  transitory.  In 
the  case  of  opposition,  however,  the  idea  stimulates  the  mind 
to  vigorous  action,  in  calling  forth  mental  systems  which  have 
elements  that  resist  the  incorporation  of  the  belief  into  the 
context  of  social  thought.  The  various  conditions  affecting  the 
stability  of  social  groups  are  so  numerous  and  in  their  joint 
action  so  complex  that  we  find  as  a  matter  of  history  that  very 
few  beliefs  are  uniformly  organized  in  the  individual  minds  of 
society,  but  rather  that  corresponding  to  the  external  division 
of  labor  in  social  activity,  there  is  an  internal  division  of  thought 
and  feeling,  making  the  social  mind  a  complex  of  different  com- 
ponent mental  systems.  As  a  result  an  idea  encounters  in  its 
spread  through  the  social  medium  a  resistance  varying  with! 
the  stability  of  the  social  groups  which  antagonize  it.  In  all 
minds  some  struggle  goes  on  before  the  idea  is  assimilated:  in 
some  the  assimilation  is  comparatively  speedy;  in  others  some-' 
what  tardy.  If  the  mental  conflict  terminates  in  each  mind  in 
practically  the  same  way,  in  the  incorporation  or  rejection  of 
the  idea,  the  struggle  has  been  an  individual  affair.  The  trans- 
mission of  an  idea  under  these  circumstances  is  like  the  onward 
movement  of  a  wave  in  a  homogeneous  medium :  as  the  wave 
retains  throughout  the  same  form,  so  each  mind  repeats  the 
apperceptive  activity.  What  we  have  here  is  the  repetition  of 
an  individual  process  forming  a  total  process  of  nearly  identical 
parts.  The  total  process  corresponds  to  an  aggregate  idea  of 
the  individual  mind.  It  is  only  in  rare  cases,  however,  that 
the  transformation  of  social  belief  is  accomplished  by  the  quiet 
spread  of  an  idea  from  one  individual  mind  to  another.  Such 
peaceful  solution  occurs  only  with  matters  of  obvious  utility, 
where  sentiment,  habit  and  prejudice  are  of  minor  importance. 
Conflicts  involving  beliefs  deeply  rooted  in  social  history,  which 
because  of  their  fitness  to  express  the  fundamental  needs  of 
humanity,  have  strong  affective  components,  are  of  a  more 


42  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

bitter  and  violent  nature.     In  proportion  as  an  idea  involves 
emotional  interests,  it  is  destined  to  encounter  somewhere  in  its 
course  firm  and  obstinate  resistance.    As  soon  as  there  is  a  divi- 
sion in  society  between  those  who  oppose  the  idea  and   those 
who  affirm  it,  the  seat  of  conflict  has  passed  from  the  individual 
to  the  social  mind.     In  the  minds  of  one  party  to  the  conflict 
the  idea  has  been  incorporated  into  the  dominant  universe  of 
belief;  in  the  minds  of  the  other,  the  idea  has  aroused  an  antago- 
nistic mental  system.    Now  mental  conflicts  of  a  social  nature 
I  may  be  settled  in  either  of  two  ways :  by  discussion  or  by  force. 
Solution  by  discussion  occurs  under  a  variety  of  forms,  depend- 
ing in  part  upon  the  particular  nature  of  the  conflict  or  opposi- 
tion.   The  opposition  may  arise  from  ignorance.     In  this  case 
the  mental  systems  which  can  assimilate  the  idea,  are  wanting 
or  imperfectly  formed.    The  idea  is  suflEiciently  grasped  to  touch 
some  universe  of  belief,  but  owing  to  its  vagueness  it  discharges 
no  further  function  than  arousing  and  keeping  ascendant  the 
particular  belief.    If  the  belief  has  strong  affective  components 
it  leads  to  practical  endeavors  that  resist  the  spread  of  the  idea. 
The  removal  of  the  conflict  is  a  matter  of  education.     The 
idea  must  be  presented  as  a  mental  system  in  the  process   of 
unfoldment,  like  a  scientific  exposition  or  judicial  opinion, — 
not  as  a  total :  for  the  component  parts,  representing  a  less  com- 
plex mental  synthesis  than  the  whole  idea,  are  more  readily 
assimilated,  and  their  interconnection  in  a  belief  follows,  once 
they  are  firmly  established.    The  mental  systems  on  which  the 
assimilation  of  the  idea  depends  vary  all  the  way  from  mere 
aggregates  of  general    experience   to  organic    combination  of 
concepts  in  still  higher  universals. 

15.  The  conflict  may  arise  from  the  indeterminateness  of 
the  mental  systems  engaged,  as  between  two  rival  theories  that 
derive  equal  support  from  the  rather  meager  data.  The  dis- 
covery of  some  pertinent  fact  puts  an  end  to  the  struggle  by 
suppressing  one  theory  and  confirming  the  other.  Such  contests 
are  not  likely  to  be  spirited  in  an  age  of  speculative  caution 
when  the  scientific  ideal  of  suspended  judgment  on  matters  not 
yet  adequately  investigated  is  being  realized,  though  in  the 
early  history  of  science,  when  superstition  formed  the  staple  of 


^     OF   THE  \ 

UNIVERSITY    ) 

OF  J 

TB.E  SOCIAL  WILL.  43 

its   pretences,  disputation  rather  than   investigation  was    the 
rule. 

Other  conflicts  occur  between  mental  systems  through  their 
connection  with  other  systems  which  are  antagonistic.  The 
conflicts  of  moral  precepts  in  particular  cases  are  frequently  of 
this  sort.  Moral  conviction,  for  instance,  may  lead  to  refusal 
of  a  gift  of  money  intended  for  some  worthy  end,  if  it  comes 
from  a  fortune  dishonestly  accumulated.  There  is  no  conflict 
of  a  moral  nature  between  the  desire  to  use  money  for  a  worthy 
end  and  the  desire  to  be  honest.  The  conflict  in  the  present 
instance  arises  from  the  peculiar  concrete  circumstances  under 
which  the  two  desires  are  conjoined.  The  removal  of  the  con- 
flict in  a  way  that  suppresses  neither  desire,  is  by  setting  them 
free  from  this  particular  conjunction  and  uniting  them  again  as 
parts  of  other  concrete  systems. 

16.  Free  discussion,  however,  is  a  mode  of  solution  success- 
ful with  only  a  portion  of  the  public  issues.  Disputes  which 
involve  matters  deeply  connected  with  social  welfare,  are  sub- 
ject to  legal  control,  being  decided  by  a  body  constituted  for  that? 
purpose.  The  psychology  of  prestige  and  obedience  explains 
the  mental  processes  leading  to  the  solution  of  these  conflicts. 
Lastly  the  conflict  may  attain  such  a  degree  of  intensity  through 
the  feehng  engendered  that  a  peaceful  solution  is  impossible 
and  nothing  short  of  an  armed  struggle  can  remove  the  division  in 
the  public  mind.  We  have  here  the  intrusion  of  a  physical  factor 
in  the  domain  of  psychological  causation.  The  victorious  idea 
in  this  more  than  in  the  preceding  case  gains  an  ascendancy 
through  external  constraint;  and  though  not  becoming  an  integ- 
ral part  of  the  mental  life  of  the  defeated  party,  does  yet  secure 
an  outward  conformity.  The  opinions  and  sentiments  which 
only  violence  could  suppress,  are  still  secretly  cherished;  but 
they  weaken  as  time  changes  the  outward  conformity  into 
second  nature.  The  consciousness  of  force  owes  its  strength 
to  the  objective  circumstances  of  its  excitation :  it  does  not  rep- 
resent an  apperceptive  synthesis,  and  hence  does  not  reflect  the 
inner  constitution  of  the  personality. 

17.  {a)  A  conflict  of  any  social  importance  marks  a  stage] 
in  the  collective  mental  life  clearly  separated  from  what  precedes  ' 


44  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

and  from  what  follows.  In  its  external  aspects,  it  forms  a 
turning  point  in  the  history  of  nations.  Even  when  the  idea 
fails  to  be  incorporated  in  the  minds  of  one  party  to  the  conflict, 
society  being  reconciled  to  a  permanent  division  of  opinion,  the 
conflict  has  not  left  the  mental  systems  in  the  minds  of  that 
party  in  their  former  condition,  for  the  points  of  contrariety 
have  been  emphasized  and  rendered  more  suggestible.  In  sub- 
sequent issues  in  which  this  belief  is  again  concerned,  either 
by  itself  or  as  a  part  of  a  more  comprehensive  movement,  the 
heightened  suggestibility  of  the  points  of  conflict  is  destined  to 
play  a  part  in  the  trend  of  social  thought. 

1 7.  (b)  A  conflict  causes  social  thought  to  return  upon  itself. 
Without  some  object  to  arrest  the  flow  of  thought,  mental  life 
would  move  on  under  the  inhibitions  and  reinforcements  com- 
ing from  the  play  of  the  forces  of  association.  Opposition 
causes  a  backward  movement  of  the  social  mind  to  the  earlier 
phases  of  the  struggle;  and  on  this  follow  mental  processes  work- 
ing toward  a  removal  of  the  conflict,  either  in  the  way  of  the 
repetition  of  the  mental  history  of  the  conflict,  or  along  lines 
outside  of  the  historic  development  of  the  conflict.  Much  more 
in  the  social  than  in  the  individual  mind  is  a  mental  conflict 
likely  to  extend  to  related  mental  systems;  so  that  along  with 
the  fundamental  issue  usually  go  many  collateral  ones. 

18.  At  times  the  deadlock  in  the  social  mind  is  relieved  as 
noted  above,  not  by  an  apperceptive  activity,  but  by  a  modera- 
tion of  the  ardor  of  the  strife,  which  permits  a  division  of  public 
opinion  on  the  matter  at  issue.  What  differences  of  opinion 
are  tolerated,  depends  upon  what  society  regards  as  essential  to 
its  welfare.  A  theocracy  punishes  blasphemy  as  the  gravest 
of  oflTenses,  because  it  feels  the  religious  faith  of  its  people  to 
be  the  strongest  social  bond.  Intolerance  arises  from  the  ascend- 
ancy of  an  idea  which  has  considerable  internal  strength  but 
which  is  under  no  systematic  control  through  an  interconnec- 
tion with  other  ideas  in  a  more  comprehensive  mental  process. 
Not  until  the  idea  encounters  resistance  so  that  its  immediate 
command  of  the  will  is  checked,  does  the  intolerance  abate  to 
any  extent.  Mental  conflict  raises  the  status  of  an  idea  above 
that  of  a  mere  impulse  to  action,  by  bringing  it  into  connection 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  45 

with  Other  ideas,  and  thus  marks  the  beginning  of  rational, 
apperceptive  control.  Then  the  mental  changes  are  manifest 
on  the  social  side  in  the  weakening  of  the  authority  of  custom. 
"  As  far  as  it  goes,  the  mere  putting  up  ofa  subject  to  discussion,  .  .  . 
is  a  clear  admission  that  that  subject  is  in  no  degree  settled  by 
established  rule,  and  that  men  are  free  to  choose  in  it.  It  is  an 
admission  too  that  there  is  no  sacred  authority — no  one  trans- 
cendent and  divinely  appointed  man  whom  in  that  matter  the  com- 
munity is  bound  to   obey."* 

19.  In  mental  conflict  the  mind  becomes  aware  of  its  own 
activity.  In  customs  and  usages  are  embodied  unities  of  expe- 
rience which  the  social  mind  does  not  clearly  apprehend,  though 
they  exert  a  control  on  social  thought  through  the  felt  similarity 
of  one  individual  case  to  another.  When  some  particular  cir- 
cumstance arises  which  because  of  its  novelty,  does  not  readily 
assimilate  with  existing  customs  or  usages,  mental  conflict 
ensues,  resulting  in  the  synthesis  of  concrete  social  experiences 
into  higher  systems.  It  is  here  that  emerge  the  general  princi- 
ples of  experiences,  moral,  political,  religious  and  utilitarian. 

Now  there  are  certain  general  limitations  connected  with 
apperceptive  action  that  should  be  noted.  History  is  irrevers- 
ible. It  is  absolutely  impossible  to  restore  any  past  social 
epoch.  The  outward  arrangements  and  appointments  may  be 
much  the  same,  but  the  inner  sentiments  and  feelings  which 
clustered  around  the  old  regime,  and  which  are  the  really  vital  ele- 
ments, are  gone  forever.  The  experiences  which  have  come 
with  the  intervening  years,  have  produced  a  new  background 
in  the  social  mind. 

20.  Sentiments  and  ideas  which  express  what  is  distinctive  ( 
in  the  mental  life  of  a  people,  cannot  be  bodily  transferred  from 
one  culture  to  another.     They  must  be  transfigured  into  har- 
mony with  the  national  genius,  if  they  are  to  be  anything  more  \ 
than  floating  ideas  or  mere  facts  of    memory.     Hence  a  belief  \ 
which  represents  a  long  social  growth,  cannot  be  assimilated  by   ' 
a  foreign  civilization  in  its  subtler  and  more  transitive  phases. 
Scientific  and  mathematical  conceptions  are  the  least  subject  to 
national  limitations,  for  the  reason  that  they  relate  to  a  domain 

*  Bagehot,  Physics  and  Politics ,  p.  161. 


46  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAY  DEN. 

of  experience  which  is  apprehended  by  the  least  variable  of 
human  faculties,  that  of  sensible  cognition;  but  the  delicate 
sentiments  of  social  life  which  find  their  most  adequate  expres- 
sion in  the  great  works  of  poetic  genius,  are  in  a  considerable 
degree  the  exclusive  property  of  the  particular  culture. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    CONSCIOUSNESS   OF   MORAL    RIGHT. 

I.  The  interaction  of  individual  minds  takes  place  with 
varying  degrees  of  intimacy  in  relation  to  the  self.  As  already 
pointed  out,  experience  organizes  in  the  individual  personality 
into  tv^o  v^ridely  contrasted  universes,  the  physical  or  impersonal 
and  the  social  or  personal.  The  feelings  which  in  concrete  men- 
tal experience,  are  attached  to  these  two  universes,  differ  widely 
in  their  nature.  The  attitude  of  the  self  toward  experience 
regarded  in  the  mere  light  of  fact,  is  one  of  disinterestedness. 
All  facts  then  stand  upon  the  same  level  so  far  as  their  value  for 
the  self  is  concerned :  and  if  the  self  does  exercise  any  selective 
preference,  it  is  on  account  of  the  feeling  which  arises  from  the 
relation  of  one  fact  to  another  as  members  of  a  conceptual  sys- 
tem. We  have  examples  of  these  impersonal  feelings  of  rela- 
tionship in  the  feeling  of  harmony  which  arises  when  some 
conception  dawns  upon  the  mind  that  injects  order  and  system 
into  a  mass  of  disconnected  facts;  in  the  feeling  of  scientific 
curiosity  which  impels  the  mind  to  seek  further  knowledge  along 
some  particular  line,  as  well  as  in  the  feeling  of  wonder  in  the 
presence  of  something  that  contravenes  the  usual  order  of  expe- 
rience. The  two  attitudes  are  mutually  exclusive,  though  alter- 
nation between  them,  at  times  even  somewhat  rapid,  is  in  the 
general  run  of  things  possible. 

2.  When  in  the  contact  of  one  mind  with  another  the  point 
of  orientation  in  the  universe  of  intercourse  lies  almost  exclu- 
sively within  some  cognitive  system,  the  consciousness  of  self 
both  in  the  way  of  idea  and  feeHng,  shrinks  to  a  minimum.  As 
the  collective  mental  activity  moves  within  the  domain  of  proc- 
esses of  knowledge,  ideas  and  feelings  of  relationship  form  the 
content  of  the  psychic  material  communicated.  The  plane  of 
communication  may  vary  all  the  way  from  the  bare  excitation 
of  mental  images  up  to  elaborate  interaction  of  conceptual  sys- 


48  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

terns.  In  these  cases  the  mental  contact  is  at  points  on  the 
universal  side  of  experience,  sharable  by  all  individual  minds. 
But  even  here  that  particular  center  of  mental  energy  v^hich  we 
call  the  self  is  to  some  extent  excited,  since  the  impersonal 
feelings  which  color  the  given  ideational  processes,  represent 
the  reaction  of  the  self  as  a  totality,  without  involving  an  unfold- 
ment  of  its  parts.  If  under  conditions  of  mental  conflict  an 
unfoldment  of  the  parts  of  the  mental  system  which  constitutes 
the  self  becomes  necessary,  self-consciousness  becomes  explicit : 
the  idea  of  self  in  its  relation  to  other  selves  together  with  the 
various  related  feelings,  comes  into  full  view.  Moral  situations 
in  particular  are  favorable  to  the  evolution  of  the  consciousness 
of  self. 

3.  So  long  as  mental  life  is  such  as  arises  in  connection  with 
responses  to  present  stimulation,  it  stands  on  a  plane  of  organi- 
zation no  higher  than  that  of  animal  want;  mental  changes  are 
then  merely  an  incident  in  the  mutations  of  experience  resulting 
from  variations  in  the  objective  order  itself.  When,  however 
the  reinstatement  of  former  experience  is  possible  from  central 
excitation,  under  any  form  that  will  lead  to  the  same  practical 
result  as  did  the  original  sense  stimulation,  animal  want  is  pass- 
ing into  a  higher  mental  organization  of  desire.  And  later 
desire  becomes  still  farther  removed  from  immediate  practical 
volition  when  the  reflective  analysis  of  experience  and  the  com- 
bination of  the  resulting  elements  into  products  similar  to  per- 
ceptual realities,  take  place.  Desire  then  arises  in  connection 
with  ideal  universes.  Many  of  these  universes  remain  merely 
floating  systems  of  the  mind,  in  more  or  less  complete  detach- 
ment from  a  group  of  habits  necessary  to  volition;  others  are 
brought  into  intimate  relation  with  the  will,  and  come  thus  to 
exert  a  direct  influence  on  the  turn  which  the  pursuit  of  practical 
ends  is  likely  to  take.  Now  among  these  ideal  universes  is  one 
of  particular  importance  in  the  change  which  brings  in  the 
relation  of  the  self  to  others :  viz,  that  universe  in  which  some 
type  of  personality  is  imagined  and  desired.  The  self  is  here 
viewed  with  respect  to  its  inner  organization,  as  composed  of 
certain  dominant  desires  and  motives  in  partial  abstraction  of 
the  external  conditions  which  surround  the  self,  whether  these 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  49 

circumstances  are  a  matter  of  hereditary  accident  or  produced 
by  the  will  of  the  individual  himself.  It  is  not  meant  by  this 
that  the  self  sets  the  circumstances  of  its  volitions  over  against 
itself  as  a  mechanical  opposite,  but  rather  that  it  sees  ramifying 
through  the  material  changes  which  its  volitions  effect,  a  certain 
type  of  personality,  the  actual  or  realized  self.  If  some  other 
type  of  personality  is  preferred  to  that  which  the  practical 
activities  of  the  self  reveal,  to  that  which  is  really  immanent  in 
volition,  a  division  exists  in  the  personality  on  account  of  the 
presence  of  an  unsatisfied  desire  in  the  form  of  an  ethical  ideal. 
Moral  progress  consists  in  the  successive  incorporation  of  such 
ideals  into  the  universe  of  practical  desire  as  they  arise  in  the! 
course  of  individual  development.  In  other  words,  the  mental 
universe  in  which  some  type  of  the  self  is  imagined,  must,  in 
order  to  be  an  ethical  ideal,  command  that  practical  assent  of  the 
mind  which  has  already  been  discussed  under  the  title  of  belief. 
4.  The  universe  of  the  ideal  self  is  social  in  the  sense  that  it 
does  not  contemplate  an  isolated  self,  but  a  self  united  by  defi- 
nite ties  to  other  like  personalities — ties  which  reflect  very 
clearly  the  relations  obtaining  in  the  existing  social  order.  The 
extent,  however,  to  which  the  ideal  universe  is  likely  to  deviate 
from  the  actual  social  world,  varies  considerably  in  the  historyl 
of  culture.  Where  there  is  great  solidarity  of  the  individual  and 
the  social  will — ^where,  in  other  words,  the  mental  life  of  society 
is  made  up  largely  of  processes  of  association,  the  deviation  is 
slight.  The  social  will  constrains  the  individual  will  into  a 
narrow  conformity  to  a  type,  since  individual  and  social  aims 
are  not  clearly  distinguished.  The  moral  character  consists 
largely  of  certain  fixed  habits  of  thought  and  action  with  their 
related  feelings,  being  thus  a  will  developed  out  of  responses 
to  concrete  moral  situations  in  which  personal  example  has 
served  largely  as  the  guide.  The  morality  of  such  an  age  is  not 
a  morality  of  reflection  that  comprehends  broad  humanitarian 
ends:  it  is  tribal  and  sectional,  yet  withal  a  mechanism  that 
responds  with  wonderful  delicacy  to  the  demands  of  that  par- 
ticular social  life,  serving  besides  as  the  indispensable  basis  of 
further  moral  growth.  When  the  individual  will  comes  to  func- 
tion in  some  degree  as  an  independent  volitional  process,  as  it 


50  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAT  DEN. 

does  with  the  appearance  of  imagination,  understanding  and 
reason,  the  universe  of  self-consciousness,  as  already  noted, 
includes  as  one  of  its  ideational  elements,  the  conception  of  an 
ideal  self.  To  the  extent  that  this  representation  is  an  integral 
part  of  that  universe:  that  is,  to  the  extent  that  it  receives  the 
support  of  self-feeling  and  its  affiliated  mechanism  of  well- 
formed  habits,  does  it  become  a  force  in  the  transformation  of 
social  life.  Conduct  is  then  motived  by  an  end  more  or  less 
clearly  conceived,  which  serves  as  a  unifying  principle  of  mental 
life — unifying  not  merely  in  the  logical  sense  of  securing  con- 
sistency within  some  group  of  ideas  or  concepts,  but  in  the  far 
deeper  psychological  sense  of  permanently  satisfying  the  most 
urgent  and  fundamental  desires  of  man.  The  moral  conscious- 
ness at  this  stage  of  its  development  presupposes  a  complex 
social  life  in  which  there  is  considerable  multiformity  of  experi- 
ence. Out  of  a  reflective  analysis  of  the  complex  social  expe- 
rience, through  which  the  individual  is  enabled  to  apprehend 
the  universal  elements  of  his  civilization,  grows  the  ideal  self — 
ideal,  and  yet  imagined  as  achieving  its  career  under  the 
special  historic  conditions  of  the  social  order  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual exists.  The  ideal  self  has,  however,  become  a  far  more 
complex  and  fluid  creation  than  was  its  predecessor  of  primi- 
tive times. 

5.  The  social  universe,  actual  and  ideal,  within  which  the 
realized  and  ideal  self  exists — the  realized  self  in  the  practical 
conations  of  the  mind  and  the  ideal  self  in  the  imaginary  uni- 
verse of  unsatisfied  social  desires — is  the  universe  of  moral 
consciousness.  The  ideational  content  of  this  universe  is  not 
its  distinguishing  trait  although  the  general  proposition  is 
true  that  the  ultimate  psychologic  fact  of  the  moral  conscious- 
ness is  a  personal  idea.  Moral  action,  in  other  words,  is  not 
action  defined  by  a  particular  physical  content,  but  action  defined 
by  the  attitude  of  the  self.  The  self  here  reacts  to  other  selves 
as  concrete  totals  rather  than  as  individualized  aspects  of  the 
general  processes  of  social  life.  The  self  is  truly  moral  so  far 
as  the  welfare  and  experience  of  other  personalities  is  included 
within  its  universe  of  practical  motives.  Whatever  in  the  way 
of  mental  cultivation,  material  possessions  and  other  externals 


THE  SOCIAL    WILL.  5 1 

contributes  to  the  efficiency  of  the  self  in  willing  and  helping 
to  realize  the  welfare  of  others,  comes  thus  to  have  a  moral 
significance.  So  far  as  the  ends  of  the  self  include  the  welfare 
of  others  merely  as  an  incident,  the  plane  of  behavior  sinks  to 
the  level  of  prudential  conduct;  so  far  as  the  injury  to  others  is 
object  of  direct  or  indirect  volition  conduct  becomes  immoral. 
In  matters  of  merely  prudential  content  the  agent  accepts  other 
personalities  as  a  psychologic  fact  and  makes  abstraction  of  all 
thought  whether  his  relation  to  them  makes  for  the  attainment 
of  the  ideal  in  their  lives.  Conduct  solicitous  of  the  welfare  of 
others  is  felt  to  possess,  because  of  its  psychic  inclusiveness,  the 
higher  moral  worth,  securing  as  it  does  in  the  long  run,  greater 
breadth,  richness  and  stability  of  individual  life.  It  is  in  con- 
duct based  on  the  perception  of  an  ideal  that  the  self  is  most 
frequently  thrown  into  the  condition  of  mental  conflict;  and  yet 
notwithstanding  the  pain  and  worry  incident  to  this,  the  appear- 
ance of  inclusive  ideals  as  motives  to  volition  is  felt  to  mark  a 
higher  stage  of  moral  development  for  the  reason  that  the  expe- 
rience out  of  which  the  ideal  is  abstracted  and  which  the  ideal 
returns  to  illumine  and  unify,  has  then  a  deeper  social  signifi- 
cance. The  relation  between  the  individual  and  the  social  will, 
which  heretofore  had  existed  in  concrete  in  particular  volitions, 
now  becomes  a  definite  object  of  cognition,  enabling  the  indi- 
vidual to  enter  sympathetically  into  hopes,  sorrows,  ambitions, 
and  disappointments  of  others.  Aside  from  its  foundation  in 
a  mechanism  of  firmly  rooted  habits,  the  moral  will  is  largely  a 
matter  of  the  sympathetic  imaginations.  A  Hfe  guided  by  ration- 
ally perceived  motives  is  likely  to  be  more  stable  and  harmonious 
than  one  based  upon  immediate  feeling;  for  in  the  latter  case  the 
consciousness  of  the  unity  of  the  self  with  the  other  is  in  the 
form  of  an  isolated  impulse  with  a  corresponding  lack  of  apper- 
ceptive control.  The  outcome  then  depends  upon  the  adapta- 
tion of  a  preformed  mechanism  of  native  and  acquired  dispo- 
sition to  the  particular  situation. 

6.  Moral  evil  is  essentially  a  condition  of  affairs  in  which 
individual  and  social  life  is  narrow,  restricted,  unstable  and 
inharmonious.  It  implies  a  condition  of  mental  conflict, — a 
conflict,  however,  in  which  mental  systems  instead  of  uniting 


52  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAYDEN. 

into  higher  and  more  comprehensive  groups,  are  dissolving  into 
minor  and  fragmentary  ones.  Mental  conflict,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  is  the  fundamental  condition  of  psychic  develop- 
ment. It  becomes  more  pronounced — not  necessarily  more  tur- 
bulent or  violent — as  the  complexity  of  the  social  personality 
increases.  The  partial  wills  through  which  the  desires  of  social 
groups  express  themselves,  are  not  of  equal  importance  in  the 
determination  of  the  total  will  of  society:  so  that  it  frequently 
happens  that  the  will  of  a  particular  social  group  encroaches 
upon  the  wills  of  other  groups,  and  in  various  ways  makes  its 
own  interests  ascendant  in  the  collective  mind.  In  proportion 
as  these  interests  are  simply  group  interests,  the  ascendancy 
has  the  efi^ect  of  shrinking  the  general  volume  of  social  life,  and 
thus  perverts  the  course  of  moral  progress,  except  in  those  early 
stages  of  social  growth  when  the  most  important  condition  of 
mental  development  is  the  formation  of  definite  habits  of  obedi- 
ence to  some  authority.  At  times  the  ascendancy  of  a  partial  will 
means  the  dominance  of  an  ideal  capable  of  serving  as  the  basis 
of  more  comprehensive  social  organization,  and  although  im- 
posed by  force  upon  the  antagonistic  social  groups,  lifts  them  to  a 
higher  plane  of  social  life  if  they  are  capable  of  assimilating  the 
ideal.  Conflict  of  this  sort  is  evidence  of  an  overflowing  vitality, 
struggling  to  embody  itself  in  new  forms.  On  the  other  hand 
the  conflict  may  grow  out  of  the  dissolution  of  social  bonds  that 
have  previously  restrained  and  coordinated  the  activities  of  the 
various  social  groups.  Thus  freed  from  subordination  in  any 
collective  activity,  the  impulses  of  each  group  begin  to  assert 
themselves  in  a  turbulent  fashion,  with  much  energy,  perhaps, 
but  with  the  energy  coming  from  the  dissolution  of  an  unstable 
system. 

7.  Aberrations  of  the  individual  will  which  are  a  reflex  of 
social  disorder,  must  be  carefully  distmguished  from  the  immoral 
tendencies  of  the  individual  will  that  are  private.  The  indi- 
vidual caught  in  the  maelstrom  of  social  revolution,  will  give 
his  sanction  to  deeds  of  violence  which  in  times  of  ordinary 
peace  and  security  he  would  blush  to  think  of.  The  usual 
balance  within  the  universe  of  motives  has  been  upset  by  objec- 
tive conditions.    But  even  in  times  of  social  unity  and  concord. 


THE    SOCIAL    WILL.  53 

there  is  a  considerable  number  of  individual  wills  which  stand 
out  in  more  or  less  conflict  with  the  social  will.  Under  these 
circumstances  we  have  order  and  uniformity  in  the  peripheral 
stimulations  that  the  individual  mind  receives,  along  with  a  lack 
of  harmony  of  thought  and  feeling.  The  conflict  evidently 
results  from  some  peculiarity  in  the  inner  constitution  of  the 
individual  mind.  In  some  cases  the  aberrant  will  is  system- 
atically controlled  by  a  universe  of  motive  which  the  social  will 
unreservedly  seeks  to  inhibit.  This  universe  may  be  of  con- 
siderable complexity,  so  far  as  mere  intellectual  relations  are 
concerned,  but  in  respect  to  personal  relations  and  feelings  it  is 
poverty  stricken.  The  purposes  of  the  self  are  more  or  less  coher- 
ent, conflicting,  however,  with  the  ends  which  society  deems 
vital  to  its  welfare.  In  other  cases  the  individual  will  does  not 
come  into  systematic  conflict  with  the  social  will,  and  yet  may 
considerably  disturb  the  moral  consciousness  of  the  community. 
A  will  of  this  type  is  not  actuated  by  a  permanent  universe  of 
immoral  motives — in  fact  it  may  possess  a  considerable  wealth 
of  social  feeling:  its  deficiency  lies  in  its  impulsiveness.  Irritat- 
ing circumstances  seriously  disturb  the  mental  balance,  setting 
free  an  isolated  impulse  that  does  violence  to  the  objective  moral 
order.  In  a  final  category  may  be  put  those  cases  of  delinquency 
which  result  from  a  general  weakness  of  the  mental  organization. 
They  do  not  come  into  contact  with  the  deeper  currents  of 
social  life  to  any  serious  extent;  the  resistance  which  they  oflFer 
to  the  disciplinary  agents  of  society  is  of  a  negative  kind,  con- 
sisting in  a  failure  to  return  to  the  social  fund  any  contribution 
for  the  energy  which  society  expends  in  their  care  and  main- 
tenance. 

8.  Thus  the  immoral  life  reflects  but  a  fragment  of  the  social 
life  or  reflects  it  in  an  irregular  and  riotous  manner.  In  moral 
crises  through  which  the  individual  mind  may  pass,  there  is 
profound  emotional  disturbance;  and  yet  in  spite  of  this,  numer- 
ous mental  systems  are  excited  whose  mutual  restraint  prevents 
precipitate  action.  In  the  excitement  of  crime  there  is  lacking 
such  reciprocal  inhibitory  action :  the  emotional  disturbance  runs 
a  serial  course  in  which  oftentimes  a  successive  accumulation 
goes  on  terminating  in  a  violent  outburst  of  passion  that  accom- 


54  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

plishes  the  act  willed  in  such  a  horrible  fashion  as  to  surprise 
the  agent  himself. 

9.  Returning  to  the  consideration  of  the  ethical  ideal  as  a 
variant  of  realized  conceptions  of  conduct,  we  naturally  encoun- 
ter the  question,  What  limit  exists  to  the  deviation  of  the  ideal 
from  the  practical  morality  of  the  times  ?  What  is  there  to  guar- 
antee that  the  ideal  which  a  nation  sets  before  itself  is  something 
more  than  a  chimera,  perhaps  luring  it  on  to  ruin  and  destruc- 
tion ?  There  is  no  a  priori  guarantee,  although  there  are  some 
conditions  which  help  to  predetermine  the  variability  of  ideals, 
or  what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  to  make  extreme  forms 
relatively  infrequent.  In  the  first  place,  as  explained  above, 
the  ethical  ideal  is  a  psychologic  fact  resulting  from  the  normal 
workings  of  the  human  mind  upon  personal  and  social  data. 
Any  new  moral  principle  or  precept,  or  more  inclusive  applica- 
tion of  some  old  principle,  is  first  of  all  conceived  by  some  mind 
of  superior  moral  insight.  The  personality  of  the  moral  seer  is 
an  outgrowth  of  the  common  social  life  both  in  the  way  of 
hereditary  equipment  and  acquired  content:  so  that  its  idealiz- 
ing activities  are  constrained  to  move  within  a  definite  circle  of 
experience.  Man's  physical  heredity  guarantees  on  the  average 
a  native  disposition  adapted  to  a  social  economy,  so  that  response 
to  social  situations  is  possible  long  before  any  intellectual  appre- 
hension of  social  relations  is  reached.  Instinct  finds  expression 
in  conscious  processes  in  the  form  of  desire,  first  in  connection 
with  purely  practical  acts  concerned  with  vital  ends,  then  in 
connection  with  apperceptive  processes  that  aim  at  the  removal 
of  some  conflict  in  the  world  of  things,  and  still  later  at  the 
removal  of  conflict  within  the  world  of  ideas.  But  even  in  the 
universe  of  abstract  relations,  the  desires  of  our  common  human- 
ity come  in  to  direct  the  imagination  and  the  understanding  in  the 
construction  of  an  ideal  through  which  these  desires  are  to 
receive  ampler  satisfaction.  The  moral  reason  views  existing 
imperfections  in  their  relation  to  an  infinite  process  of  devel- 
opment, and  in  this  way  satisfies  in  part  the  desire  for  harmony 
and  order  in  the  objective  moral  world.  But  it  does  not  rest 
content  with  merely  doing  this.  Though  the  intellectual  proc- 
esses excited  by  conflict  in  the   universe  of  ideal  desires  are 


TIJE  ASOCIAL  WILL.  55 

in  some  measure  independent  of  practical  volition,  the  primitive 
tendency  of  the  mind  toward  action  never  completely  disappears. 
The  moral  v^ill  is  preeminently  a  practical  will,  striving  after 
something  more  fundamental  than  consistency  of  ideation — 
striving  in  fact  after  a  consistency  co-extensive  with  the  person- 
ality in  its  thought,  feeling  and  action.  Again,  an  ideal  far 
removed  from  the  existing  moral  sentiment  of  the  community, 
although  it  is  a  logical  development  of  that,  cannot  command  a 
passionate  devotion  from  the  people  because  of  its  lack  of  apper- 
ceptive contact  with  the  social  mind.  The  impractical  moral 
ideal  thus  fails  to  find  serious  lodgment  in  the  public  mind,  not 
only  because  it  fails  as  a  postulate  of  the  practical  will  to  unify 
the  desires  already  ascendant  in  a  more  satisfactory  manner 
than  at  present,  but  also  because  its  pursuit  involves  too  much 
pain  and  effort.  The  ideal  must  fit  into  the  preformed  mechan- 
ism of  the  social  disposition  and  be  able  to  organize  the  practical 
interests  of  life.  There  is  continually  going  on  a  selection  of 
ideals,  and  even  at  times  a  selection  of  the  idealist.  Preoccu- 
pation with  ideal  interests,  to  the  neglect  of  vital  conditions, 
brings  into  play  the  forces  of  physical  selection.  Competition 
between  races  with  the  resulting  selection  maintains  a  certain 
harmony  between  the  national  ideal  and  the  national  character. 
If  the  practical  activities  excited  by  the  ideal  are  uniformly 
unsuccessful,  the  ideal  soon  loses  its  ascendancy.  The  Roman 
ideal  of  universal  empire  feeds  on  the  success  of  Roman  arms. 

10.  The  utility  of  an  ideal  lies  not  alone  in  the  harmony  and 
consistency  of  life  which  it  makes  possible,  but  also  in  the  hope 
and  courage  and  through  them  the  vigor  of  life  which  it  inspires. 
One  of  the  peculiar  traits  of  moral  feeling  is  the  permanent 
satisfaction  which  it  brings  the  individual,  no  matter  what  the 
external  accidents  of  his  career  may  be.  The  finely  constituted 
moral  nature  feels  that,  no  matter  what  obstacles  have  prevented 
it  from  achieving  a  career  rich  in  material  content,  it  has  still 
nobly  fulfilled  its  destiny  in  the  world  by  putting  forth  every 
effort  to  live  the  moral  law  as  it  conceived  the  same. 

11.  (a)  The  individual  cherishes  an  ideal  not  only  of  him- 
self but  of  the  social  order  of  which  he  is  a  part.  The  interaction 
of  these  common  desires  of  individual  minds  forms  a  collective 


56  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

process  that  is  a  social  ideal.  The  social  ideal  is  generally  much 
vaguer  in  its  lineaments  than  the  individual  ideal,  yet  is  frequently 
a  powerful  stimulus  to  action  because  of  the  social  emotion  which 
stands  back  of  it.  In  the  social  ideal  the  collective  mind  expres- 
ses as  clearly  as  it  can  the  desires  which  it  has  in  regard  to  its 
own  constitution.  The  social  ideal  is  generally  most  clearly 
understood  by  the  ruling  class,  who  are  the  chief  organs  in  the 
selection  of  means  and  ends  in  the  actual  historic  process  in 
which  the  ideal  strives  to  embody  itself.  But  almost  every 
individual  consciousness  feels  to  some  extent  national  senti- 
ments, no  matter  how  lowly  its  organization  may  be.  History, 
literature,  myth,  folk-lore,  in  short,  all  tradition  relating  to  the 
deeper  emotional  interests,  bring  the  ideal  into  more  or  less 
clear  expression  in  the  individual  mind.  We  may  thus  speak 
with  propriety  of  a  national  ideal  so  far  as  there  exists  in  indi- 
vidual minds  a  common  motive  to  volitions  that  aim  at  realizing 
a  particular  type  of  social  personality.  Usually  the  social  person- 
ality moves  on  a  much  lower  ethical  plane  than  the  more  exalted 
individual  wills.  Nations,  in  their  dealings  with  each  other, 
have  been  actuated  largely  by  prudential  motives,  for  the 
reason  that  the  national  safety  has  been  regarded  as  of  supreme 
value.  The  broader  sympathy  which  has  followed  from  com- 
mercial intercourse  and  the  ascendancy  of  a  religion  preaching 
the  brotherhood  of  man,  has  mitigated  somewhat  this  national 
egoism.  We  get  evidence  of  a  movement  toward  a  higher  plane 
of  collective  ethics  in  some  matters  of  international  concern  in 
the  idea  that  the  lives  of  all  nations  have  a  moral  worth  in  part 
relative  to  a  collective  process  that  embraces  all  humanity. 

1 1 .  (b)  A  higher  form  of  collective  ethics  means  more  com- 
prehensive apperceptive  control  in  the  social  mind.  Moral  con- 
flict involves  the  mutual  restraint  as  well  as  the  mutual  assistance 
of  mental  systems  which  are  components  of  the  personality. 
In  a  healthy  condition  of  public  morals,  when  rights  are  carefully 
protected  through  the  strict  and  impartial  enforcement  of  the 
law,  the  desires  and  volitions  of  the  various  social  groups  are 
harmoniously  combined  in  the  social  will.  There  is  a  full  and 
complete  synthesis  of  the  claims  and  interests  of  the  various 
groups  according  to  accepted  standards  of  right.    On  the  other 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  57 

hand  when  there  is  a  systematic  violation  of  the  rights  of  any 
class,  we  have  a  partial  and  incomplete  synthesis  of  mental  proc- 
esses in  the  social  mind,  due  to  the  suppression  of  the  desires 
and  volitions  of  the  social  group.  The  suppressed  volitions 
assert  themselves  as  soon  as  the  restraint  is  withdrawn,  causing 
a  renewal  of  the  mental  conflict.  In  such  periods  of  public 
disorder,  motives  of  the  social  will  do  not  restrain  each  other 
but  add  their  energy  one  to  another  along  the  line  of  violence 
and  confusion. 

12.  The  moral  springs  of  action  are  kept  in  a  healthy 
condition  only  by  effort.  The  social  will  in  its  effort  to  restrain 
the  individual  will  into  harmony  with  itself,  strengthens  the 
habits  on  which  its  character  is  founded  and  invigorates  its  emo- 
tional life.  All  social  institutions  rest  upon  conflict  in  the 
processes  of  the  social  mind,  since  through  conflict  the  social 
will  is  spurred  on  to  constant  endeavor,  and  thus  escapes  the 
penalty  of  idleness, — extinction  and  decay.  The  resistance  of 
the  physical  gives  us  our  industrial  economy:  of  ignorance,  our 
educational  economy:  of  evil,  our  moral  economy.  I  speak  of 
these  as  economy:  for  running  through  them  is  the  law  of  rational 
effort  which  aims  at  a  maximum  of  achievement  for  a  given 
expenditure. 

13.  The  primary  ethical  feelings  of  love,  friendship,  duty, 
obligation,  attach  most  firmly  to  the  ascendant  personal  universe 
of  the  individual.  What  particular  group  of  persons  shall  con- 
stitute the  personnel  of  this  universe,  depends  upon  the  factors 
which  determine  the  strength  of  mental  systems.  In  the  early 
stages  of  social  growth,  the  ascendancy  lies  in  the  tribal  asso- 
ciation. Other  forms  of  association  like  the  family  are  too 
unstable  to  furnish  a  definite  set  of  experiences  that  will  organ- 
ize into  a  permanent  universe  of  personal  or  social  relations. 
The  tribal  union  is  the  instrument  most  concerned  in  the  preser- 
vation of  social  life  in  the  early  struggle  for  existence;  and 
round  it  are  associated  the  most  vivid,  most  intense  and  most 
frequent  of  social  experiences.  The  result  is  that  the  conscious- 
ness of  tribal  ends  forms  the  most  stable  mental  system  in  the 
individual  mind,  attracting  to  itself  the  moral  feelings  that  are 
the  first  to  appear  in  social  progress.    Further  mental  develop- 


58  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

ment  of  the  social  personality  brings  changes  tending  in  two 
directions:  one  which  is  intensive,  permeated  by  the  intense 
feeling  of  natural  affection,  resulting  in  the  partial  will  of  the 
family  group;  the  other  extensive,  embracing  a  multitude  of 
personalities  within  its  scope,  the  will  of  the  state.  The  will  of 
the  family  group  is  the  first  form  which  appears  in  that  process 
of  infoldment  in  the  social  will  that  gives  us  ultimately  an  indi- 
vidual will  which  has  ends  of  its  own,  and  which  enables  the 
social  will  to  find  self-conscious  expression.  The  collective 
result  of  this  process  of  infoldment  is  a  rational  social  will 
declaring  itself  through  the  agency  of  the  state.  Corresponding 
to  these  two  wills  of  the  family  and  the  state,  are  two  systems  of 
moral  motives  in  the  individual  mind,  differing  somewhat  in 
their  constitution.  In  the  sphere  of  family  relations  the  most 
fundamental  motive  is  the  feeling  of  natural  affection,  the  tend- 
ency of  which  is  toward  a  complete  obliteration  of  individual 
and  group  interests,  as  separable  factors,  while  in  the  sphere  of 
civic  relations  the  sentiment  of  law,  or  the  feeling  of  legal  right, 
is  the  basic  motive — a  motive  of  the  understanding  in  which 
more  or  less  complete  abstraction  is  made  of  the  concrete  deter- 
minations of  personality,  and  the  individual  is  viewed  simply 
as  the  subject  of  certain  rights  and  reciprocal  duties. 

14.  Certain  ceremonies,  in  particular  the  ceremony  of  adop- 
tion, helped  to  extend  the  rigid  limits  which  custom  imposed 
on  the  morality  of  primitive  times.  It  is  but  natural  that  the 
stranger  should  be  practically  without  rights  according  to  the 
standards  of  primitive  morality,  for  the  reason  that  the  savage 
sees  the  individual  only  in  the  light  of  tribal  ends,  and  so  excludes 
the  stranger  from  the  scope  of  social  feeling.  The  thought  of  the 
stranger  as  the  member  of  some  unknown  or  hostile  tribe  arouses 
in  the  mind  of  the  savage  a  real  mental  conflict,  just  as  soon  as 
the  feelings  of  common  humanity  begin  to  prompt  him  to  extend 
to  the  stranger  the  privileges  of  his  family  or  clan.  The  device 
of  adoption  according  to  the  primitive  way  of  thinking  changes 
the  personality  of  the  stranger  in  a  manner  satisfying  to  the 
demands  of  tribal  safety,  and  creates  between  the  stranger  and 
the  savage  a  system  of  reciprocal  rights  and  duties  sustained  by 
the  common  impulses  which  the  tribal  will  aroused  in  their 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  59 

minds.  Adoption  extends  the  sphere  of  obligation  without 
impairing  the  strength  of  the  feeling,  since  the  ceremony  itself 
is  a  solemn  affair  by  which  the  sanction  of  the  tribal  gods  is 
obtained  for  a  more  intimate  personal  relation.  It  makes  the 
limits  of  social  feeling  more  elastic,  but  could  evidently  work 
only  little  change  in  the  mental  disposition  of  the  tribe,  founded 
as  it  is  upon  rigid  customs.  Far  more  powerful  for  change  is 
the  contact  brought  about  by  war  or  commerce;  especially  if 
political  union  under  a  single  head  is  the  result,  provided  the 
two  cultures  are  equally  virile,  or  nearly  enough  so,  in  order 
that  one  may  not  completely  extinguish  the  other.  With  the 
thorough  intermixture  of  the  two  races,  goes  on  a  corresponding 
incorporation  of  their  cultures,  resulting  in  a  more  complex 
civilization,  and  a  greater  openness  to  foreign  influences.  The 
individual  moral  universe  has  been  both  broadened  and  deep- 
ened :  the  virtues  common  to  the  two  cultures  have  now  a  w^ider 
social  validity,  while  each  culture  has  contributed  some  virtues 
peculiar  to  itself. 

15.  Besides  the  rules  of  conduct  valid  for  the  entire  social 
order,  there  are  special  rules  valid  only  within  some  particular 
social  group.  This  necessarily  results  from  the  fact  that  social 
groups  have  desires  and  sentiments  of  their  own.  Certain  vir- 
tues are  more  fundamental  to  the  life  of  one  group  than  they  are 
to  another.  The  differentiation  in  class  morality  is  for  obvious 
reasons  pronounced  when  social  classes  are  rigidly  separated 
from  each  other  by  hereditary  lines.  The  desire  of  the  superior 
caste  to  maintain  their  ascendancy  leads  to  the  adoption  of 
elaborate  ceremonials  and  usages  which  make  the  difference  in 
rank  plain  to  the  eye  and  so  accustom  all  to  the  thought  of 
rank  as  a  just  and  necessary  principle  of  social  organization. 
Moral  respectability  lies  chiefly  in  meeting  the  ceremonial  exac- 
tions of  one's  caste.  A  socialization  of  caste  morality  begins 
when  an  interchange  of  thought  and  feeling  between  the  differ- 
ent castes  sets  in.  The  movement  of  ideas  is  more  rapid  from 
above  downward,  as  the  intellectual  fermentation  in  the  upper 
social  ranks  is  the  more  vigorous;  but  in  compensation  there  is 
a  slower  and  more  massive  flow  of  social  feeling  upward  from 
the  heart  of  the  multitude  which  suffuses  the  whole  social  life. 


6o  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAY  DEN. 

The  combined  result  is  a  system  of  national  virtues  that  serve 
as  a  groundwork  for  the  more  special  virtues  of  the  various 
social  classes. 

1 6.  A  social  life  of  manifold  activities,  characterized  by  a 
rapid  interchange  of  ideas,  is  governed  less  by  habit  and  more 
by  a  consensus  of  motive  resulting  from  an  openness  to  sugges- 
tions and  impressions  along  numerous  lines.  Such  openness  is 
due  to  the  increased  range  of  individual  experience  which  makes 
possible  the  elaboration  of  mental  systems  of  varied  content. 
The  resulting  increase  in  the  breadth  of  sympathy  leads  to  a 
change  in  moral  values.  The  past  no  longer  commands  the 
obedience  and  loyalty  that  it  once  did,  for  its  sanctions  lose 
something  of  their  former  force,  owing  to  a  growing  dispo- 
sition to  accept  the  institutions  of  the  past  for  what  they  are 
worth  as  contributing  much  or  little  toward  realizing  the  domi- 
nant ideals  of  the  present.  While  the  individual  will  has  now 
vastly  extended  its  realm  of  social  relation,  it  has  been  to  some 
extent  forced  to  make  abstraction  of  those  details  of  personality 
which  were  formerly  the  chief  source  of  inspiration  and  strength. 
Though  the  old  feelings  which  clustered  around  the  narrow  but 
deep  personal  experience  of  family  life  have  been  somewhat 
weakened  by  the  change,  in  their  stead  have  come  others  which 
may  even  more  constrain  the  individual  will  to  self-sacrifice. 
The  individual  mind  is  assailed  by  an  indefinitely  larger  num- 
ber of  impressions,  and  so  far  as  these  have  a  common  tend- 
ency they  organize  in  a  cumulative  way  into  motives  of  con- 
siderable strength.  But  the  relaxing  of  the  bonds  of  traditionary 
constraint  which  results  from  the  openness  of  the  individual 
mind  to  social  impressions  of  numerous  orders,  makes  possible 
a  great  number  of  ideas  which  may  be  operative  in  determining 
the  activity  of  the  imagination  to  the  construction  of  a  corre- 
sponding number  of  ideals.  Some  confusion  then  results  in  the 
matter  of  moral  values.  This  invariably  happens  in  the  opening 
up  of  new  lines  of  social  endeavor.  It  becomes  at  times  under 
such  conditions  difficult  to  subsume  all  the  concrete  acts  of 
practical  conduct  under  the  old  moral  principles.  The  diffi- 
culty continues  until  through  the  mutual  inhibition  of  antago- 
nistic motives  and  the  rational  synthesis  of  harmonious  incen- 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  6 1 

tives,  the  will  is  supplied  with  some  definite  moral  concept  that 
sobers  and  tempers  the  imagination.  Once  that  confusion  exists 
as  to  moral  values  within  a  particular  domain  of  social  life 
egoism  asserts  itself  in  the  more  vigorous  natures  and  causes 
self-deception  in  regard  to  the  moral  quality  of  actual  achieve- 
ment. When  some  conception  emerges  capable  of  harmonizing 
some  of  the  new  practices  with  the  great  body  of  accumulated 
moral  precepts,  the  accidental  and  the  transient,  which  are 
essentially  the  immoral  complications  in  the  situation,  disappear 
and  the  social  mind  goes  back  in  thought  and  feeling  to  the 
permanent  ends  which  are  the  indispensable  basis  of  all  devel- 
opment. 

17.  The  principles  of  morality  thus  seem  to  stand  in  vital 
relation  to  the  mental  health  of  the  individual  and  social  will. 
Certain  disturbances  of  feeling  are  symptomatic  of  mental  dis- 
order: melancholia,  for  instance,  indicates  the  severance  of  the 
natural  relation  between  feeling  and  action:  the  mind  becomes 
suspicious  of  itself,  suspecting  the  sincerity  of  its  own  motives; 
minutely  attentive  to  its  feelings  in  themselves  for  no  ulterior 
reason.  In  the  excitement  of  mania,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
mental  life  expands:  projects  enter  the  mind  with  astonishing 
rapidity,  in  utter  disregard  of  physical  possibility  or  of  moral 
obligation.  But  out  of  the  fury  nothing  permanent  emerges, 
for  the  very  violence  of  the  emotive  processes  suspends  the  apper- 
ceptive activity  necessary  to  efficient  mental  work.  Contrast 
with  these  two  conditions  that  of  a  mind  sound  in  its  moral 
constitution.  In  the  latter  we  see  a  general  hopefulness,  faith, 
respect  for  self  and  others  urging  the  will  on  to  systematic  and 
controlled  endeavor.  Much  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  social 
mind.  Faith  in  itself,  hopefulness  of  the  future,  reverence  for 
the  past,  a  sentiment  of  honor  and  of  law — these  in  moderation 
are  the  indispensable  conditions  of  high  efficiency  in  the  social 
will.  Wide-spread  corruption,  especially  if  it  occurs  with  a 
general  state  of  social  apathy  and  indifference,  is  an  unmistak- 
able sign  of  social  decay.  These  conditions  are  of  course  reflected 
in  the  individual  life;  but  such  demoralization  of  individual  life 
differs  both  in  its  origin  and  in  its  nature  from  personal  degen- 
eracy.    The  former  is  due  to  a  lack  of  proper  discipHne  from 


62  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

the  social  medium;  the  latter  to  an  internal  derangement  of  the 
personality  resting  on  an  impaired  physical  heredity.  But  there 
are  some  cases  where  the  two  merge  imperceptibly  into  each 
other:  many  succumb  to  temptation  in  times  of  profound  social 
disorder  and  excitement  who  under  less  exacting  conditions 
would  round  out  a  career  of  decency  and  respectability.  There 
may  be  no  impairment  in  the  abstract  conceptions  of  right, 
duty,  law,  justice,  but  the  blunted  moral  feelings  cause  an 
impairment  of  the  practical  moral  judgment,  so  that  the  moral 
identity  of  concrete  acts  that  belong  to  the  same  moral  category 
is  not  perceived.  Moral  conceptions  become  detached  from 
moral  attitudes  and  form  a  sort  of  floating  mental  system. 
Moral  feeling  "is  a  function  of  organization,''  writes  Maudsley, 
"and  is  essentially  dependent  upon  the  integrity  of  that  part  of 
the  nervous  system  which  ministers  to  its  manifestations  as  is 
any  other  display  of  mental  function.  Its  sanction  is  given  to 
such  actions  as  are  conducive  to  the  well-being  and  the  progress 
of  the  race,  and  its  prohibitions  fall  upon  such  actions  as  would, 
if  freely  indulged  in,  lead  to  degeneration  if  not  extinction  of 
mankind."  Moral  feeling  then  is  the  most  sensitive  index  of 
the  mental  integrity  of  the  individual  who  has  received  a  thor- 
ough training  in  a  social  environment  enforcing  rigorous  stand- 
ards of  conduct.  A  delusion  may  seize  a  community  and  lead 
to  official  acts  that  violate  all  canons  of  justice  and  mercy,  as 
did  the  witchcraft  delusion  at  Salem;  but  seizures  of  this  sort 
are  usually  ephemeral,  as  history  testifies.  They  do  not  excite 
the  apprehension  that  a  delusion  of  the  individual  mind  does, 
because  they  are  largely  a  matter  of  the  intellect,  aroused  by 
external  excitation,  while  a  delusion  of  the  individual  mind 
exists  in  spite  of  the  innumerable  impressions  of  the  social  envi- 
ronment which  tend  to  inhibit  it.  With  this  goes  a  derangement 
of  the  aff'ective  life  which  does  not  accompany  a  belief  merely 
erroneous.  But  in  spite  of  these  exceptions,  the  general  proposi- 
tion remains  that  the  immoral  life  both  public  and  private  is  the 
life  of  disorder,  confusion,  violence  and  weakness. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    CONSCIOUSNESS    OF    LEGAL    RIGHT. 

I.  The  social  will,  in  its  composite  organization,  lacks  the 
unity  of  the  individual  will  in  action,  though  motived  by  more 
numerous  and  more  comprehensive  ends.  As  a  mental  system 
it  is  composed  of  minor  groups  that  can  function  in  far  greater 
independence  of  each  other  than  is  the  case  with  the  contents 
of  the  individual  will.  The  affective  processes  are  likewise 
much  more  delicately  balanced  in  the  individual  personality 
than  in  the  social  personality.  We  find,  for  instance,  a  frenzy 
of  excitement  spreading  through  a  community  which  in  the 
case  of  the  individual  would  indicate  grave  mental  disorder  in 
the  way  of  systematic  mania.  An  emotion  in  spreading  through 
the  social  medium  undergoes  considerable  mutation  as  it  spreads 
from  one  social  stratum  to  another  and  even  from  one  individual 
to  another  within  the  same  social  stratum.  Take  the  instance 
of  a  piece  of  legislation  which  affects  certain  property  rights. 
The  social  classes  who  possess  no  property  view  the  matter  with 
comparative  indifference,  while  the  particular  group  whose  inter- 
ests are  threatened  oppose  in  anger  and  indignation  the  pro- 
posed legislation.  The  emotive  attitude  of  the  individual  mind 
toward  a  situation  is  for  the  moment  unitary,  but  emotive  pro- 
cesses in  the  social  mind  may  at  a  particular  moment  possess 
all  shades  and  variations.  Now  we  have  seen  that  the  moral 
consciousness  is  essentially  the  personal,  the  personaHty  in 
some  form  or  other  being  the  end  of  action.  It  is  then  evident 
that  the  very  condition  for  moral  contact  in  its  higher  aspects, 
is  an  intimacy  of  individual  contact  by  which  each  comes  to 
have  detailed  knowledge  of  the  personality  of  the  other.  As  the 
sphere  of  contact  widens,  the  finer  and  more  delicate  adjust- 
ments of  friendship  cease,  partly  because  of  a  lack  of  intimate 
knowledge  of  other  people,  and  partly  because  of  the  absence  of 
certain  emotive  processes,  instinctive  in  their  nature,  which 


64  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN, 

the  bare  notion  of  social  relations  would  not  excite  to  any  extent. 
Intimacy  sometimes  arises  from  a  community  of  interests,  as  in 
the  case  of  certain  voluntary  associations;  but  this  is  generally 
feeble  in  comparison  with  that  which  arises  out  of  the  instinctive 
needs  of  humanity.  Still  more  attenuated  is  the  personal  feeling 
when  we  pass  to  economic  organization,  where  men  enter  into 
coordinated  activities  largely  from  a  desire  for  certain  physical 
objects  capable  of  satisfying  human  want.  The  contact  there 
is  reduced  down  to  a  sphere  of  ideas  relating  to  physical  proc- 
esses. In  so  far,  however,  as  in  any  of  these  spheres  of  contact, 
the  personality  of  the  agent  comes  in  as  a  conscious  factor  or 
condition,  rights  and  duties  are  created.  Obligation  attaches 
to  the  contract  between  the  employer  and  the  laborer,  as  to  the 
rate  of  wages,  hours  of  work,  etc.,  not  because  of  the  laborer's 
position  in  the  industrial  organization  as  an  economic  force, 
but  because  in  and  through  the  terms  of  the  contract  ramifies 
the  personality  of  each.  Now  it  is  evident  that  an  emotion 
which  arises  from  intimate  personal  knowledge  and  relation  can 
never  be  a  motive  to  the  social  will  in  the  full  sense  of  the  term. 
In  order  to  rise  to  the  level  of  social  motivation,  an  idea  must 
arouse  those  mental  systems  which  are  organized  with  approxi- 
mate equality  in  each  individual  mind.  The  social  will,  in  so 
far  as  it  is  truly  social,  aims  at  ends  valid  for  the  whole  social 
organization,  and  never  makes  the  individual  as  such  the  direct 
object  of  volition,  or,  in  other  wordsy  the  personality  of  the  indi- 
vidual comes  in  merely  as  an  incident  in  the  pursuance  of  gen- 
eral ends.  The  juristic  personality  is  merely  an  abstract  concep- 
tion, a  construct  of  the  understanding  and  reason,  and  is  a  conven- 
ient fiction  by  means  of  which  legal  relations  are  systematically 
thought  of.  Thus  the  law  specifies  certain  mental  qualifications 
necessary  for  testamentary  competency,  and  in  doing  so  takes 
account  of  certain  well-known  facts  of  human  nature :  but  even 
in  the  judicial  application  of  the  law,  where  the  law  comes  in 
contact  with  the  concrete  personality,  the  history  of  that  person- 
ality is  a  matter  of  concern  only  in  so  far  as  it  helps  to  determine 
whether  the  given  individual  possesses  the  specified  soundness 
of  mind.  The  law  is  interested  in  maintaining  some  and  sup- 
pressing other  systems  of  personal  relationship  more  than  it  is 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  65 

in  the  instrument  of  these  relationships,  the  concrete  personality, 
although  it  is  constrained  to  operate  through  the  latter  in  doing 
so.  This,  of  course,  is  the  ideal  of  what  the  law  should  be, 
rather  than  the  practice  which  actually  obtains,  though  it  is  a 
psychologic  fact  like  any  other  ideal. 

2.  The  first  way  in  which  the  social  will  acts  upon  the  indi- 
vidual will  is  in  the  way  of  restraint,  through  the  mechanism 
of  the  law.  It  arises  out  of  conflict  between  individual  wills 
which  disturbs  the  consciousness  of  right  of  the  community 
and  especially  the  consciousness  of  right  as  organized  in  the 
government.  The  psychologic  difference  between  the  conscious- 
ness of  law  as  it  exists  in  the  mind  of  the  community  and  in  the 
mind  of  the  government  may  be  expressed  by  saying  that  in  the 
first  case  it  has  more  of  the  nature  of  a  sentiment  and  in  the 
second  more  that  of  volition.  The  fundamental  condition  for 
this  inhibitive  reaction  of  the  social  will  is  the  externalization 
of  the  idea  in  the  individual  mind  in  the  form  of  some  act,  since 
this  is  the  only  way  in  which  an  idea  in  the  individual  mind  can 
set  going  a  collective  process.  The  reaction  of  the  social  will 
has  a  double  effect:  one  on  the  individual  will  and  the  other  on 
the  social  will  itself.  The  individual  will  has  the  consciousness 
of  its  guilt  brought  before  it,  and  at  the  same  time  through  the 
special  discipline  to  which  it  is  subjected,  may  undergo  an 
educative  process  that  leads  to  the  formation  of  a  character  as 
harmonious,  at  least,  to  the  social  will  as  the  condition  of  per- 
sonal liberty  demands.  In  other  words,  the  excesses  of  the 
individual  will  are  brought  within  the  Hmits  of  tolerance  of  the 
social  will.  The  crime  conflicts  with  the  consciousness  of  law 
in  the  public  mind.  If  the  crime  goes  unpunished,  there  is  a 
blunting  of  the  feeling  of  legal  right.  As  soon  as  a  community 
habituates  itself  to  letting  crimes  go  unpunished,  the  feeHng  of 
hostility  which  the  infraction  of  right  arouses,  weakens,  as  no 
feeling  remains  intact  which  becomes  permanently  disjoined 
from  the  corresponding  act.  Punishment  maintains  the  integ- 
rity of  the  feeling  of  right  in  the  social  mind,  because  it  furnishes 
a  definite  channel  for  the  expression  of  the  feeling  and  thus  avoids 
the  paralyzing  effect  of  what  would  be  otherwise  a  mere  emotional 
fermentation,  besides   emphasizing  the    concept  of  the  right. 


66  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 


The  social  will  also  comes  into  contact  with  the  individual  will 
in  a  more  positive  fashion,  performing  functions  that  are  more 
creative  than  those  of  mere  inhibitive  supervision.  The  social 
will  as  organized  in  the  state  sets  before  itself  certain  specific 
ends  that  aim  at  realizing  a  certain  type  of  social  personality. 
The  state  appears  as  an  undertaker  in  various  enterprises 
whose  magnitude  is  so  great  and  the  return  for  which  is  so 
remote  and  imperceptible  that  private  associations  are  not  dis- 
posed to  assume  the  risk.  The  most  powerful  motive  in  private 
association,  outside  of  religious  impulse,  is  the  economic  one. 
As  economic  value  rests  upon  scarcity,  implying  limitations  in 
the  powers  of  production,  there  are  many  things  desirable 
because  of  their  social  utility  whose  pursuit  cannot  be  brought 
within  the  scope  of  this  motive.  Many  lines  of  endeavor  which 
from  the  standpoint  of  immediate  economic  return,  appear 
insane  and  delusive,  like  the  chemical  tinkering  of  the  alchem- 
ists, do  yield  in  the  course  of  centuries  enormous  returns  on  the 
energy  invested.  Back  of  all  economic  activity  must  be  a  senti- 
ment of  patriotism,  of  religion  and  of  kinship.  A  high  indus- 
trial economy  comes  only  after  centuries  of  effort  during  which 
an  intense  race  spirit  and  consciousness  has  been  fabricated. 
An  ardent  race  feeling  is  an  absolute  necessity  for  survival  in 
the  struggle  for  existence  going  on  among  competing  social 
groups.  Let  a  nation  lose  faith  in  itself;  let  it  become  indifferent 
to  its  own  past  achievements,  and  view  without  emotion  the 
sacrifices  of  its  martyrs  and  heroes;  let  mutual  trust  and  confi- 
dence, sympathy  and  virtue  pass  away  and  its  doom  is  sealed. 
A  national  song  or  hymn,  a  work  of  great  poetic  genius — in 
short,  art  in  all  its  varied  forms  gives  articulate  expression  to 
the  deepest  hopes  and  aspirations  of  a  people  and  so  converts 
a  vague  emotional  tendency  into  a  social  volition  that  molds 
the  national  life  and  raises  the  plane  of  collective  endeavor  both 
in  the  way  of  its  spiritual  and  material  achievements.  In  the 
encouragement,  direction  and  control  of  the  social  agencies 
making  for  the  higher  life — even  in  some  cases  directly  super- 
vising them — the  state  appears  as  the  most  efficient  instrument 
of  the  social  will. 

3.     The  contrast  between  the  legal  and  the  moral  in  regard 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  6/ 

to  personal  relations,  pointed  out  in  the  opening  paragraph  of 
this  chapter,  calls  for  further  consideration.  We  may  speak  of 
the  impersonal  character  of  certain  social  relations,  not  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  relations  holding  of  impersonal,  i.  e.,  phys- 
ical things,  but  in  the  sense  that  the  universe  of  intercourse 
between  the  minds  concerned  is  a  mental  system  in  which 
abstraction  is  made  of  the  specific  determinations  of  personality. 
When  a  judge,  for  example,  renders  a  decision  in  strict  accord 
with  the  merits  of  the  case,  as  we  say,  he  is  treating  the  matter 
in  a  way  as  objective  as  a  scientist  does  the  facts  of  nature.  His 
personality  is  simply  the  instrument  through  which  the  social 
will  expresses  itself  in  respect  to  the  point  in  question.  Of  course 
self-feeling  may  be  present  but  not  in  the  way  of  prejudice 
against  or  sympathy  for  the  party  to  the  case:  it  is  present  in 
connection  with  the  ideal  he  has  of  himself  as  the  impartial 
administrator  of  the  law.  But  in  accordance  with  the  fact  that 
any  mental  system  shares  in  some  degree  the  unity  of  the  per- 
sonality, there  is  reflected  into  the  decision  to  some  extent  the 
personal  bias  of  the  judge,  either  unconsciously  through  the 
limitation  of  habit  and  temperament,  or  consciously  with  a 
knowledge  that  such  is  the  case.  The  result  is  dependent  upon 
the  special  circumstances.  In  the  case  of  the  intended  depart- 
ure from  the  strict  demands  of  the  law,  if  it  is  done  from  preju- 
dice, passion,  hatred,  and  other  egoistic  motives  of  no  moral 
worth,  positive  mischief  is  the  probable  result;  if  the  departure 
is  made  from  a  consideration  of  the  higher  moral  ends  of  social 
welfare,  and  if  no  injustice  is  done  thereby  to  any  particular 
person,  undisputed  gain  follows  in  the  way  of  making  the  law 
as  a  whole  a  more  efficient  instrument  of  social  progress.  The 
unintended  modification  of  the  law  goes  on  through  judicial 
interpretation.  The  law  at  best  can  only  deal  with  classes  of 
acts,  with  only  very  general  reference  to  the  material  conditions 
of  the  act :  so  that  acts  are  continually  occuring  which  diff'er  so 
much  in  their  material  circumstances  from  anything  previously 
coming  under  judicial  cognizance,  that  the  highest  legal  insight 
is  demanded  in  dealing  with  them.  Right  here  is  an  oppor- 
tunity for  the  development  of  professional  and  technical 
opinion    through    the    collaboration   of    decisions    that    grow 


68  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

and  expand  in  the  course  of  time  to  such  an  extent  that  a  new 
right  has  been  created.  In  this  collaboration  of  judicial  opinion 
are  acting  also  those  general  social  influences  modifying  the 
spirit  of  the  entire  legal  system.  But  it  is  the  manifest  ideal  of 
justice  to  reduce  the  personal  factor  to  a  minimum,  and  to  do 
this  certain  checks  and  balances  are  introduced  in  the  judicial 
machinery.  In  some  cases  appeal  is  permitted;  in  other  cases 
the  verdict  is  a  collective  decision  of  a  court  consisting  of  sev- 
eral judges.  A  collective  verdict  is  held  to  minimize  personal 
bias  by  broadening  the  view  of  the  case  through  the  interchange 
of  judicial  opinion  and  the  cancellation  of  irrational  or  chance 
factors.  The  law  should  correspond  with  the  general  sentiment 
of  justice  in  the  community,  though  it  frequently  happens  that 
a  law  securing  a  fair  average  of  justice  in  former  times  no 
longer  expresses  in  many  of  its  details  the  existing  social  senti- 
ment. Judicial  interpretation  plays  an  important  part  in  main- 
taining the  vitality  of  the  law  by  a  process  of  slow  but  continuous 
adjustment  to  social  changes.  The  legal  sentiment  of  a  com- 
munity is  in  a  healthy  condition  when  it  does  not  consist  of  the 
mere  motive  to  preserve  the  legal  system,  but  of  a  willingness 
to  obey  it  because  it  is  felt  to  be  the  most  important  objective 
condition  in  the  moral  progress  of  mankind. 

4.  The  consciousness  of  law  varies  in  its  organization  in  the 
minds  of  the  various  social  groups.  It  is  most  sensitively  con- 
stituted with  respect  to  those  rights  the  maintenance  of  which 
is  most  necessary  to  the  ends  and  purposes  of  the  group  life,  as 
determined  by  the  psychological  conditions  governing  the 
strength  and  stability  of  mental  systems.  Out  of  the  experiences 
which  enter  into  the  composition  of  the  dominant  universe  in 
the  mind  of  the  group,  imagination  develops  an  ideal  which  the 
group  seeks  to  impose  upon  its  members — the  ideal  through 
which  the  group-conscience  declares  itself:  nonconformity  to 
which  on  the  part  of  the  individual  will  calls  forth  the  reaction 
of  the  group  will,  sometimes  in  the  way  of  personal  disapproval, 
at  other  times  in  the  way  of  compulsion  exercised  through  the 
channels  of  the  law.  It  is  in  those  fundamental  points  round 
which  the  self-feeling  of  the  group  flows,  that  the  individual  is 
likely  to  have  the  clearest  consciousness  of  right  as  defended 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  69 

and  protected  by  the  law.    The  consciousness  of  legal  right,  if 
it  really  figures  as  a  motive  to  the  will,  is  something   more 
than  a  mere  system  of  abstract  concepts  of  the  rights  and  duties 
enforced  by  the  law:  back  of  these  must  be  the  self-feeling  which 
arises  when  something  is  felt  to  be  an  important  condition  of 
the  welfare  of  the  self.    It  is  especially  on  the  side  of  feeling  that 
the  vigorous  enforcement  of  the  law  strengthens  the  conscious- 
ness of  legal  right.    If  officials  are  derelict  in  their  sworn  duty, 
allowing  an  open  violation  of  the  law,  the  injury  done  extends 
far  beyond  the  incidents  of  the  particular  case;  the  feeling  and 
respect  for  all  law  is  weakened  in  the  public  mind.    Not  only 
is  the  strict  enforcement  of  the  law  in  those  cases  in  which  the 
state  takes  the  initiative  in  punishing,  of  fundamental  impor- 
tance in  keeping  alive  the  feeling  for  the  law  in  the  public  mind, 
but  perhaps  equally  important  is  the  action  of  the  individual 
in  asserting  his  right  in  cases  where  the  state  leaves  the  enforce- 
ment of  the  right  optional  with  the  individual.    Where  the  indi- 
vidual puts  forth  his  own  effort  to  assert  the  supremacy  of  the 
law,  although  it  may  be  from  a  purely  egoistic  motive  to  pain 
his  assailant  or  recover  material  damages,  and  not  for  the  sake 
of  the  law  itself,  still  his  own  consciousness  of  law  is  strengthened 
and  through  his  example  that  of  others.     In  fact  the  failure  to 
assert  the  right  impairs  to  some  extent  the  moral  vigor  of  the 
individual  concerned,  for  his  self-feeling  has  been  aroused  with- 
out issuing  into  appropriate  action.    The  willingness  to  abandon 
one's  own  right,  even  if  the  law  views  it  with  indifference,  is 
incompatible  with  that  sturdy  and  manly  sense  of  justice  and 
of  law  demanded  of  every  citizen  of  a  democracy.     A  virile 
sense  of  right  in  the  minds  of  the  great  mass  of  people  is  the  / 
best  safeguard  against  the  prostitution  of  public  interests  by 
corrupt  officials,  for  it  makes  demands  of  them  in  the  way  of 
rectitude  and  honesty  that  a  timid  spirit,  hesitating  to  demand 
its  dues,  does  not. 

5.  The  energy  with  which  the  feeling  is  aroused  in  a  conflict 
of  right,  depends  upon  the  conditions  governing  the  interaction 
of  mental  systems.  The  invasion  of  a  legal  right  is  a  special 
instance  of  conflict  in  the  social  mind.  Some  act  is  committed 
which  cannot  be  incorporated  with  the  system  of  rights  main- 


70  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

tained  by  the  law:  the  act  is  an  objective  fact,  a  system  of  per- 
ceptual relations,  which  arouses  into  full  or  partial  activity  the 
system  of  ideas  and  feelings  constituting  the  consciousness  of 
the  right.  Within  certain  limits  the  consciousness  of  legal  right 
is  strong  in  proportion  to  the  frequency  with  which  the  law  is 
invoked  to  resist  the  invasion  of  rights.  Where  the  legal  insti- 
tutions have  been  developed  largely  as  the  result  of  national 
effort,  the  nation  is  likely  to  have  a  healthy  sense  of  justice. 
Nothing  confirms  this  proposition  better  than  the  history  of 
legal  development  in  England,  in  particular  that  of  the  common 
law  which  is  a  vast  body  of  rights  developed  through  judicial 
decisions  determining  particular  concrete  rights.  A  people 
which  has  much  to  do  with  the  creation  of  its  own  laws,  has  its 
consciousness  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  moral  right  and 
justice  largely  bound  up  with  the  consciousness  of  law.  A  class 
which  has  never  made  use  of  the  law  as  a  means  of  its  material 
or  moral  welfare,  has  no  conception,  much  less  a  feeling  of  right. 
The  rights  which  it  does  have,  are  due  largely  to  the  good  will 
and  conscience  of  the  ruling  classes.  Rights  which  have  been 
thus  conferred,  and  not  won  by  effort,  do  not  rest  upon  habits 
of  action  firmly  rooted  in  the  personality  of  the  class  whose 
welfare  they  sustain.  Aggression  does  not  call  forth  a  moral 
reaction  in  the  form  of  disturbed  feeling  of  right,  but  only  the 
response  of  animal  hostility.  Too  much  litigation  may,  however, 
impair  the  consciousness  of  right.  The  enforcement  of  rights 
through  the  agency  of  the  law  is  a  rough  and  harsh  process;  and 
in  the  pain  and  irritation  which  is  necessarily  incident,  the  moral 
feeling  for  the  law  is  frequently  lost  in  the  feeling  of  revenge  or 
animosity.  As  soon  as  the  law  is  severed  in  thought  and  feeling 
from  the  consciousness  of  moral  right,  it  may  degenerate  simply 
into  an  instrument  serving  no  purpose  but  to  vex  and  harass 
an  enemy. 

(  6.  The  vividness  and  intensity  of  the  experiences  connected 
with  the  establishing  of  a  right,  are  important  factors.  That 
which  has  been  acquired  at  much  cost  and  sacrifice,  usually 
stands  in  intimate  relation  to  self-feeling,  and  has  thus  strong 
affective  elements  back  of  it,  helping  to  maintain  its  ascendancy. 
A  right  gained  through  profound  social  disturbances  is  firmly 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  7 1 

implanted  in  the  memory  and  affection  of  the  people :  they  feel 
that  they  have  put  into  it  so  much  of  their  very  life  and  being 
that  it  is  an  integral  part  of  themselves.  A  whole  array  of  power- 
ful sentiments  and  emotions — family  affection,  patriotism,  reli- 
gious feeling — is  brought  to  the  support  of  a  right  acquired  at 
the  cost  of  the  nation's  blood  and  treasure. 

7.  The  comprehensiveness  of  the  interest  involved  affects 
the  stability  of  a  right.  A  right  which  ramifies  through  the  whole 
social  structure,  will  call  forth  proportional  resistance  to  any 
disturbance.  If  the  given  right  is  enjoyed  by  all  social  classes, 
it  is  a  motive  to  the  whole  will  of  society,  and  as  such  can  com- 
mand more  energy  to  resist  its  invasion  than  only  a  particular 
right.  The  zeal  with  which  a  people  rush  to  the  defense  of  the 
national  honor  when  assailed  by  a  foreign  power,  shows  the 
strength  of  motives  which  are  supported  by  a  tide  of  emotion 
surging  through  the  entire  current  of  social  life. 

8.  A  right  derives  strength  from  its  interconnection  with 
other  rights  in  a  system  of  rights.  Custom  makes  for  self-con- 
sciousness in  a  community  in  that  it  expresses  a  usage  known 
to  be  valid  for  the  whole  community,  but  the  custom  precedes 
and  does  not  follow  as  the  result  of  a  clearly  conceived  idea  in 
the  social  mind.  When,  however,  specific  declarations  of  the 
social  will  exist  in  the  form  of  statutory  enactments,  society  has 
arrived  at  a  very  clearly  defined  idea  of  the  various  ends  of  its 
own  existence,  which  form  a  relatively  coherent  system.  There 
emerges  the  consciousness  of  a  system  of  law,  over  and  above  the 
concrete  laws  which  form  its  content.  The  idea  of  the  legal 
system  comes  to  be  a  motive  and  leads  to  efforts  looking  to  the 
maintenance  of  the  legal  order  itself.  A  law  then  acquires  a 
force  as  being  the  member  of  a  system,  beyond  that  which 
comes  from  defending  some  particular  right. 

9.  Where  the  enforcement  of  the  right  is  a  matter  of  option 
with  the  individual,  there  is  a  likelihood  that  he  will  look  at  the 
right  and  the  consequences  which  flow  from  its  invasion,  largely 
from  the  standpoint  of  his  own  private  interests,  ignoring  the 
wider  social  results  in  the  way  of  the  reflex  influence  of  the 
enforcement  of  a  particular  right  upon  the  consciousness  of 
right  in  the  mind  of  the  community.    So  long  as  the  enforcement 


72  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

of  the  right  is  left  to  the  individual  himself,  it  is  subject  to  all 
the  caprices  of  individual  temperament:  personal  feelings  like 
revenge,  anger,  jealousy,  fear,  come  in  to  operate  independent 
of  impersonal  standards.  There  will  consequently  be  irregu- 
larity, excess,  deficiency  of  action  in  the  enforcement  of  the  right. 
The  first  step  toward  increasing  the  security  of  the  right,  con- 
sists in  surrounding  the  penalty  which  the  injured  party  may 
exact  with  certain  limitations;  here  the  violence  and  excess  of 
the  individual  will  is  checked  by  the  social  will  which  declares 
itself  through  the  particular  rules.  The  volition  in  which  the 
individual  exacts  vengeance,  comes  to  include  social  motives 
that  subject  the  emotive  elements  of  the  volition  to  some 
restraint.  The  right  of  punishment  is  first  felt  in  the  history 
of  legal  development  as  largely  an  individual  matter.  The 
socialization  of  the  primitive  power  exercised  by  the  individual 
/  in  avenging  his  own  wrongs  reaches  its  final  stage  when  the 
j  right  of  punishment  is  taken  entirely  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
'  individual  and  vested  in  some  regularly  constituted  authority 
which  represents  the  community  in  the  case.  The  changes  which 
have  occurred  in  the  meantime  in  the  individual  and  public 
consciousness  of  right,  are  numerous.  In  a  general  way  moral 
conceptions  have  become  more  clearly  defined  in  the  social 
mind :  the  social  mind  has  reached  some  consciousness  of  itself 
as  a  moral  entity,  in  both  idea  and  feeling,  as  is  attested  by  the 
fact  that  its  own  will  is  now  authoritative  in  the  punishment 
of  crime;  while  the  individual  now  views  crime  from  a  wider 
social  standpoint,  seeing  that  conceptions  of  certain  social  stand- 
ards, apprehended  as  valid  for  all  minds,  now  enter  into  the 
composition  of  his  idea  of  crime.  Further,  the  state  in  making 
general  provision  in  an  authorized  agency  for  the  punishment 
of  crime  has  been  actuated  by  motives  of  general  validity,  and 
not  by  feelings  and  ideas  arising  out  of  a  particular  case.  Thus 
the  state  has  provided  in  the  personality  of  its  agents  a  psychic 
device  for  the  judging  of  crime  which  makes  accidental  feelings 
and  ideas,  such  as  arise  in  the  mind  of  the  injured  person,  as 
little  determinative  as  possible.  Of  course  feeling  is  necessary 
in  any  volition,  whether  public  or  private;  but  it  is  a  very  impor- 
tant matter  for  legal  development  whether  such  feeling  be  objec- 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  73 

tive,  relating  to  the  mechanism  of  social  acts,  or  subjective, 
relating  to  the  personality  of  the  individual  in  relative  detach- 
ment from  the  social  v^hole. 

10.  Mental  conflict  has  played  a  considerable  part  in  the 
development  of  legal  right.  Those  rights  for  which  society 
maintains  an  elaborate  protective  agency,  are  evidently  vital  to 
institutions  and  relations  v^hich  society  regards  of  fundamental 
importance.  The  value  which  the  social  will  attaches  to  them, 
is  measured  by  the  vigor  of  the  resistance  it  offers  to  the  invasion 
of  them.  In  the  domain  of  legal  right  the  social  disposition  is 
receiving  articulate  expression  in  certain  specific  declarations  of 
the  social  will.  The  mass  of  social  experience  which  is  here  in 
function  is  so  great  that  the  resulting  mental  inertia  resists 
change.  Old  legal  rights  are  thus  imbedded  in  psychic  mechan- 
isms of  considerable  stability.  Many  of  the  most  fundamental 
rights  have  been  secured  only  by  revolutionary  means,  that  is, 
by  profound  disturbances  in  the  social  personality  in  which  not 
only  have  old  habits  been  broken  up  but  new  conceptions  of 
social  and  political  values  have  emerged.  But  the  mental  con- 
flict involved  in  the  creation  of  legal  rights,  is  seen  not  only  in 
those  more  profound  psychic  movements  which  involve  more  or 
less  the  whole  social  will,  but  also  in  those  more  limited  mental 
processes  in  which  the  will  of  the  individual  or  group  is  con- 
cerned. Legal  rights  which  are  judicial  affirmations  of  pre- 
existing customs  and  usages,  have  arisen  in  these  minor  conflicts 
of  the  individual  or  group  will.  The  experiences  of  effort  and 
struggle,  which  accompany  the  mental  conflict,  act  as  powerful 
motives  to  maintain  the  right  during  the  first  stages  of  its  ascend- 
ancy. As  the  assertion  of  the  right  becomes  more  and  more  a 
matter  of  habit,  these  experiences  lapse  from  memory,  and 
leave  the  right  a  rule  whose  origin  is  no  longer  felt.  In  the 
absence  of  direct  historic  instruction  to  the  contrary,  the  indi- 
vidual born  into  an  old  social  order  in  which  thorough  harmony 
existed  between  the  legal  institutions  and  the  national  character, 
would  be  ignorant  of  the  nature  of  the  real  process  by  which 
the  idea  of  a  legal  right  rises  to  the  status  of  volition  in  the 
public  mind. 

II.     The  extent  to  which  the  individual  feels  the  law  as  a 


74  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAYDEN. 

constraint  depends  upon  the  degree  to  which  it  restricts  the 
spontaneous  flow  of  thought  in  his  own  mind.  If  a  strong  desire 
arises  in  his  mind  that  runs  counter  to  the  law,  his  processes  of 
thought  are  blocked,  and  the  idea  of  the  law  as  an  objective 
condition  of  conduct  comes  into  full  consciousness.  While  the 
psychological  nature  of  these  conflicts  is  much  the  same  as  that 
of  any  other  conflict,  the  moral  significance  of  the  conflict  varies 
considerably. 

^  12.  The  atomistic  way  of  conceiving  social  relations  looks 
/iipon  the  state  largely  as  a  coercive  agency  standing  over  in 
somewhat  mechanical  opposition  to  the  individual.  The  power 
of  compulsory  subordination  which  the  state  possesses  is  of 
course  one  of  the  fundamental  incidents  of  its  constitution,  but 
to  emphasize  this  aspect  of  state  function  to  the  exclusion  of 
others,  shows  a  serious  lack  of  insight  into  the  mental  nature  of 
society.  Civil  institutions  are  from  such  a  standpoint  merely 
artificial  arrangements  which  men  can  enter  into  as  freely  and 
dissolve  as  freely  as  they  do  a  business  corporation  or  any  other 
purposive  association.  Those  processes  in  the  mind  of  the 
individual  in  which  he  thinks,  feels  and  wills  the  part  of  a 
citizen,  are,  however,  possible  only  because  his  mind  and  the 
other  minds  of  the  particular  political  order,  interact  in  a  col- 
lective mental  process  that  extends  backward  through  many 
centuries.  The  same  historic  development  which  has  given 
legal  and  political  institutions  and  relations,  has  created  the 
citizen  as  the  subject  of  legal  and  political  rights,  with  his  love 
of  liberty  and  his  sentiment  of  law.  It  is  only  in  a  social  order 
that  a  personality  can  exist,  i.  e.,  a  psychic  entity  in  which  the 
consciousness  of  its  own  being  is  a  motive;  and  of  course  there 
is  implied  in  all  this  corresponding  institutions  that  maintain 
objective  conditions  that  render  this  motive  effective. 

13.  In  the  desire  for  freedom  the  individual  does  not  view 
himself  as  isolated  from  others,  but  as  a  member  of  a  mental  com- 
munity in  which  a  certain  range  of  free  determination  of  indi- 
vidual volition  is  secured  through  a  system  of  reciprocal  rights 
and  duties.  The  practice  of  freedom  must  to  some  extent 
precede  the  desire  for  freedom.  An  animal  is  sometimes  said 
to  "desire  its  freedom"  through  a  courtesy  of  speech  that  has 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  75 

no  strict  regard  for  psychologic  fact;  but  in  the  light  of  the 
discussion  of  desire  given  in  a  previous  chapter,  it  is  evident 
that  the  motive  impelling  the  animal  to  escape  its  confines  is  a 
feeling  of  unpleasantness  resulting  from  impeded  action.     A/ 
social  desire  like  the  desire  for  civic  freedom  can  arise  in  the>^!l_ 
individual  mind  only  as  the  result  of  its  interaction  with  other /*^ 
minds  in  which  the  same  desire  is  simultaneously  developed,) 
and  thus  presupposes  certain  social  practices  and  experiences 
out  of  which  the  mind  can  elaborate  it.    The  routine  of  social 
experience  necessary  to  the  development  of  definite  and  fixed 
legal  and  political  concepts  implies  objectively  modes  of  conduct 
generally  obtaining  in  the    social    order,    and    corresponding 
rights  with  a  regularly  constituted  agency  to  enforce  them.    The 
common  consciousness  of  right  means,  therefore,  a  general  har- 
mony between  the  volitions  of  the  individual  will  and  those  of 
the  social  will,  though  at  times  conflict  at  some  points  of  contact 
occurs. 

14.  The  particular  institutions  through  which  the  feeling  of 
right  expresses  itself,  define  and  make  real  the  feeling  by  con- 
necting it  with  definite  forms  of  activity.  The  individual,  so 
far  as  he  is  aware  of  the  authority  which  by  common  consent 
is  vested  in  these  institutions,  has  a  conception  of  a  common  end 
which  is  being  furthered  by  their  enforcement,  and  must  on  the 
whole  regard  them  as  equally  indispensable  to  his  own  well- 
being,  though  at  particular  times  he  may  be  blind  to  the  truth 
on  account  of  some  conflict  with  certain  of  his  inclinations.  To 
the  extent  that  such  is  the  case  obedience  to  the  existing  stand- 
ards of  right  is  a  matter  of  free  determination  of  the  individual 
will  and  not  of  constraint  by  a  motive  externally  determined 
and  deriving  but  little  support  from  the  apperceptive  activities 
of  the  mind.  The  beginning  of  the  consciousness  of  legal  right) 
as  a  moral  condition  of  man's  existence,  is  obedience  to  the\ 
social  standards  of  right  expressed  in  custom.  The  social  prepa- 
ration which  the  discipline  of  custom  makes  for  the  higher 
morality  of  duty,  consists  in  forming  habits  that  inhibit  some 
desires  and  in  connection  with  these,  a  consciousness  of  a  com- 
mon welfare.  A  considerable  portion  of  the  motives  which 
make  for  obedience  to  law,  consists  of  habits  formed  with  refer- 


76  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

ence  to  concrete  situations  arising  in  the  various  private  asso- 
ciations of  which  the  individual  is  a  member.  It  is  here  because 
of  the  more  simple  character  of  the  social  relations,  that  the 
fact  of  a  common  life  is  most  clearly  conceived  and  strongly  felt. 
The  opinion  that  the  individual  in  passing  from  the  life  of  the 
simple  social  groups  to  the  life  of  the  larger  group  of  a  political 
society,  is  completely  bisected  in  his  personality  by  the  ascend- 
ancy of  an  entirely  new  set  of  motives,  is  at  variance  with  all 
the  laws  of  psychic  causation.  Undoubtedly  a  man  in  his  func- 
tion of  a  political  subject  is  actuated  by  motives  different  in 
some  respects  from  those  dominant  in  his  mind  in  other  spheres 
of  association;  but  still  a  considerable  amount  of  psychic  mate- 
rial in  the  way  of  habit  and  idea  is  carried  over  from  private 
lines  of  social  endeavor  to  public  ones.  Participation  in  the 
common  life  of  private  associations,  tends  to  develop  a  conscious- 
ness of  a  collective  well-being  and  a  willingness  to  subordinate 
in  some  degree  individual  preferences  and  inclinations  to  the 
will  of  others,  which  will  stand  one  in  good  stead  in  his  civic 
relations. 

15.  The  organization  of  the  consciousness  of  a  common 
well-being  varies  considerably  in  the  history  of  culture.  In  the 
early  periods  of  social  development  when  the  social  will  comes 
to  expression  in  the  individual  consciousness  chiefly  in  the  form 
of  impulsive  motives,  the  collective  is  felt  rather  than  clearly 
apprehended  by  the  intellect.  Historic  effects  have  been  organ- 
ized in  the  social  mind  in  habits  and  simple  ideational  systems 
in  which  only  the  most  obvious  relations  of  cause  and  effect  are 
conceived.  Any  social  movement  is  understood  only  through 
the  changes  it  produces  in  the  concrete  relations  of  one  indi- 
vidual to  another.  In  the  emotional  excitement  which  at  times 
sweeps  through  the  social  order,  the  individual  passes  through 
experiences  of  unusual  intensity  and  is  borne  onward  by  a 
stream  of  life  which  he  is  powerless  to  resist.  But  up  to  this 
point  the  consciousness  of  a  common  life  is  a  psychological, 
not  an  ethical  fact.  The  individual  is  moved  to  action  by 
motives  externally  excited,  or  by  those  which  spring  directly 
out  of  the  character  or  disposition  and  form  a  system  of  practi- 
cal tendencies  of  the  will.     It  has  in  it  no  ideal  of  a  common 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  77 

good.  A  somewhat  higher  stage  is  reached,  not  only  so  far  as 
the  intellectual  apprehension  of  social  relations  but  in  a  more 
important  way  so  far  as  moral  development  is  concerned,  when 
the  particular  relations  through  which  the  individual  appre- 
hends his  connection  with  the  social  whole,  are  thought  of  as 
a  common  good  in  which  he  and  others  share  in  realizing  some 
ideal  of  self.  Whenever  the  law  steps  in  to  protect  the  individual 
from  the  invasion  of  these  rights,  he  has  direct  demonstrable 
experience  of  the  law  as  a  practical  condition  of  the  moral  order. 
Indeed  the  firm  connection  between  the  idea  of  the  law  and  voli- 
tions operating  within  the  practical  relations  of  life  is  the  neces- 
sary element  in  any  effective  consciousness  of  legal  right,  no 
matter  what  the  individual's  theoretical  insight  into  the  law  as 
a  social  factor  may  be;  and  it  is  really  the  absence  of  such  asso- 
ciation that  in  part  makes  possible  the  criminal  mind.  A  weak 
mental  connection  between  the  idea  of  the  law  and  practical 
volition  indicates  that  the  law  is  not  fulfilling  its  true  mission 
in  the  social  order :  it  indicates  some  serious  lack  of  harmony 
between  the  national  character  and  the  legal  institutions.  This 
is  the  case  when  partial  or  group  interests  become  ascendant 
and  use  the  law  with  all  its  accumulated  energy  to  constrain 
the  social  will  into  harmony  with  their  demands;  or  when  a 
nation  imposes  its  own  laws  upon  a  subject  people  without  any 
regard  to  native  law  or  custom;  or  again  when  in  the  moral  decay 
of  a  nation,  insincerity  and  apathy  have  seized  a  people,  and 
there  is  wanting  the  zeal  and  energy  to  enforce  a  system  of  laws 
adapted  to  a  sturdy  and  resolute  character.  Provided  there  is 
widespread  peace  and  security  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  ordinary 
private  rights  of  business  and  the  other  common  relations  of 
life,  considerable  harmony  between  the  legal  institutions  and 
the  social  disposition  may  exist,  with  but  little  of  that  higher 
ideahsm  in  the  consciousness  of  law  that  makes  the  individual 
take  an  active  and  watchful  interest  in  the  law  as  the  most  effi- 
cient means  of  attaining  the  ends  of  collective  welfare.  He 
looks  upon  the  state  much  as  he  does  a  business  partnership, 
giving  it  his  hearty  support  because  he  feels  it  as  a  practical 
necessity.  Perhaps  the  higher  civic  idealism  is  not  attainable 
in  a  social  order  where  there  is  a  sharp  separation  in  thought 


78  EDWIN  ANDREW  HAT  DEN. 

and  practice  between  political  and  legal  rights.  However  ineffi- 
cient in  some,  perhaps  many  respects,  democracy  may  be  as  a 
form  of  political  organization,  there  is  in  it  the  possibility  of  the 
average  person  rising  to  a  higher  moral  plane  in  his  conception 
and  feeling  for  the  law  than  in  a  political  order  where  the  task 
of  legislation  and  administration  is  the  work  of  an  hereditary 
class. 

1 6.  The  consciousness  of  collective  ends  and  existence 
becomes  more  precise  in  its  ideational  contents  not  only  through 
the  knowledge  practically  acquired  through  state  affairs,  but 
from  many  theoretical  disciplines  like  history,  political  science 
and  sociology.  When  to  all  this  knowledge  from  whatever 
source  obtained,  is  added  feeling  strong  enough  to  raise  the 
entire  mental  system  to  the  status  of  a  volition,  a  certain  ideal  of 
national  existence  has  emerged  that  is  to  be  a  practical  force  in 
social  life.  And  as  the  political  organization  is  the  medium 
through  which  social  organization  is  most  authoritatively  ex- 
pressed, this  ideal  is  most  intimately  associated  both  in  thought 
and  deed  with  the  activities  of  the  state.  This  statement 
must  not  be  taken  to  mean  that  the  ideal  of  collective  ends  has 
been  the  sole  motive  or  force  acting  to  organize  the  social  will 
in  the  state,  for  as  a  matter  of  history  other  motives  of  inferior 
moral  worth  have  cooperated  with  it.  The  national  ideal  exists 
imbedded  in  fact  in  a  complex  of  experiences  relating  to  indi- 
vidual as  well  as  social  ends;  but  the  fact  of  importance  is  that 
the  ideal  exists,  whatever  may  be  its  connections  with  other 
mental  states,  and  so  makes  to  the  extent  of  its  ascendancy  the 
political  order  a  moral  one  as  well.  No  state  would  rest  secure 
even  upon  that  higher  form  of  selfishness,  in  which  the  individual 
looks  at  things  from  the  social  point  of  view  on  account  of  pru- 
dential motives.  Egoism  of  itself  tends  to  shrink  the  social 
horizon  and  obscure  in  the  individual  mind  conditions  and  rela- 
tions that  are  necessary  to  the  realization  of  his  own  ambition. 
The  calculation  of  purely  personal  advantage  weakens  the 
strength  and  spontaneity  of  action  which  social  life  in  so  many 
of  its  circumstances  demands.  A  certain  interest  for  the  social 
life  in  and  of  itself  is  a  necessary  condition  for  that  enlarged 
grasp  of  social  relations  without  which  a  career  successful  in 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  yg 

merely  external  achievement  is  possible.  A  motive  aroused 
solely  by  external  constraint,  i.  e.,  one  which  excites  an  act 
not  because  of  its  general  harmony  with  the  constitution  of  the 
personality  but  because  of  its  strength,  could  not  be  relied  upon 
to  render  uniform  support  to  the  interests  of  the  state;  for  as 
soon  as  the  external  circumstances  which  excited  it  pass  away, 
the  feeling  and  desires  which  represent  the  organized  tenden- 
cies of  the  self  are  sure  to  assert  themselves.  It  is  precisely  at 
times  when  the  political  order  needs  the  most  defense  that  a 
motive  of  this  sort  could  be  least  relied  upon.  Mere  restraint 
could  never  create  a  personality  as  an  organized  system  of 
thought,  feeling  and  volition;  and  to  the  extent  that  any  insti- 
tution rests  upon  coercion,  is  the  mental  life  back  of  it  narrow 
and  impoverished.  Coercion  is  justified  at  times  simply  because 
the  repetition  of  a  thing,  even  when  done  under  compulsion, 
forms  a  corresponding  habit  that  may  later  function  as  a  part 
of  a  process  which  in  its  totality  is  free  and  rational.  Despotism 
for  this  reason  has  a  sanction  in  the  ethics  of  political  develop- 
ment. 

1 7.  Thus  the  state  is  not  to  be  conceived  as  something  over 
and  above  the  humanity  which  manifests  itself  through  social 
institutions.  It  is  a  collective  phenomenon  of  a  certain  char- 
acter existing  in  and  through  the  reciprocal  relations  which  the 
members  of  society  sustain  to  each  other.  Society  as  organized 
in  the  state  differs  from  society  as  organized  in  other  forms  in 
the  ends  of  its  existence  and  the  mode  of  attaining  such  ends. 
The  supreme  compulsory  power  which  is  an  incident  of  the 
constitution  of  the  state,  derives  social  significance  from  the 
fact  that  it  is  compulsion  exercised  according  to  law,  maintain- 
ing a  system  of  rights  which  are  necessary  to  a  collective  life. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   SOCIAL  WILL  AS   EXPRESSED  IN  THE   STATE!  THE  THEORY 
OF  SOVEREIGNTY   IN   ITS    PSYCHOLOGICAL   BEARINGS. 

1.  The  attribute  which  the  state  possesses,  of  being  in  cer- 
tain cases  the  mo^t  authoritative  expression  of  the  social  will, 
is  generally  spoken  of  by  writers  on  political  science  as  that  of 
sovereignty.  It  is  particularly  in  this  field  of  social  phenomena 
that  political  science  and  social  psychology  have  much  of  their 
data  in  common.  For  this  reason,  no  doubt,  political  writers 
have  been  prone  to  express  their  views  on  the  authority  of  the 
state  in  psychological  terms.  In  fact,  in  the  writings  of  some 
authors  we  find  a  more  or  less  clearly  conceived  psychological 
theory  of  the  state.  But  on  the  whole  the  history  of  the  theory  of 
sovereignty  reveals  much  confusion  and  vagueness,  largely  on 
account  of  an  inadequate  social  psychology. 

2.  There  are  two  facts  of  social  psychology  which  are  basic 
to  an  understanding  of  this  subject:  one  is  the  reality  of  the 
individual  will  and  the  other  is  the  reality  of  the  social  will. 
An  attempt  has  been  made  in  the  preceding  pages  to  show  that 
the  reciprocal  interaction  of  individual  minds  in  a  community 
is  a  collective  process  having  certain  definite  features;  that 
only  in  virtue  of  such  interaction  is  it  possible  for  the  individual 
mind  to  come  to  even  a  slight  realization  of  its  own  powers;  but 
that  although  so  far  as  its  total  history  is  concerned,  continuous 
social  contact  is  implied,  there  is  yet  an  apperceptive  organi- 
zation of  experience  which  renders  it  relatively  independent  of 
immediate  stimulation.  Now  there  are  some  things  in  the 
interaction  of  individual  minds  which  lead  to  nothing  very  defi- 
nite along  the  line  of  conduct,  such  as  vague  sentiments  and 
various  forms  of  emotional  excitement.  So  long  as  such  is  the 
case  the  public  mind  is  in  a  state  of  confusion  which  continues 
until  in  the  process  of  interaction  some  individual  mind  is  reached 
in  which  are  aroused  apperceptive  activities  that  issue  in  a  clear 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL  8l 

idea  or  concept,  and  in  this  way  convert  a  vague  emotional 
tendency  into  a  volitional  process  that  is  social  in  its  scope.  In 
other  words  an  individual  personality  is  necessary  to  give  artic- 
ulate expression  to  social  processes  of  thought  and  feeling  before 
any  definite  resolution  of  conflicts  in  the  social  mind  is  possible. 
Once  that  a  specific  conception  emerges  at  a  point  in  the  social 
medium,  provided  it  satisfies  existing  mental  conditions,  it  is 
forthwith  incorporated  by  some  system  in  the  social  mind.  This 
** particularizing"  function  of  the  individual  personality,  to  use 
a  term  of  Professor  Baldwin's,  seems  to  be  the  truth  in  the  con- 
tention of  certain  writers  that  sovereignty  resides  always  in  a 
determinate  body  of  persons;  and  so  far  as  this  is  the  case,  they 
have  shown  deeper  insight  into  the  constitution  of  society  than 
others  who  hold  to  an  extreme  universalism  that  does  away  once 
for  all  with  all  individual  determination.^  But  it  is  possible 
to  conceive  the  independence  of  this  particular  body  of  persons 
in  too  absolute  a  manner.  Atomism  in  psychology  and  ethics 
leads  readily  to  atomism  in  political  philosophy,  in  accordance 
with  which  sovereignty  is  likely  to  be  thought  of  too  much  as 
physical  coercion,  commanding  obedience  through  the  motive 
of  fear  with  but  little  regard  to  the  real  needs  of  human  nature 
which  a  political  order  satisfies.  The  particular  personality 
through  which  social  desire  comes  to  articulate  utterance,  is  an 
outgrowth  of  the  social  life  and  can  be  considered  as  the  source 
of  authority  only  in  the  relative  sense  that  it  makes  an  individual 
contribution  to  a  social  tendency  by  converting  the  latter  into 
a  more  or  less  clearly  defined  movement. 

3.  The  form  of  social  control  which  writers  on  political 
philosophy  have  in  mind  when  speaking  of  sovereignty,  is  one 
which  comes  rather  late  in  the  history  of  society.  It  presup- 
poses a  consciousness  in  which  society  has  arrived  at  some  recog- 
nition of  itself  as  a  psychic  entity,  with  defined  concepts  of 
values  in  the  various  spheres  of  life,  and  some  regularly  consti- 
tuted and  authoritative  means  of  putting  into  execution  its  pref- 
erences. The  volitional  processes  in  which  society  declares  its 
will  through  the  mechanism  of  the  law,  are  complexes  which  in 
their  totality  are  consciously  constituted  with  respect  to  par- 

^  The  Austinians,  e.g.,  in  contrast  to  the  French  "Doctrinaires." 


82  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

ticular  conflicts,  yet  contain  parts  which  are  automatic  and 
stable.  Many  of  these  automatic  connections  have  had  a  long 
social  history,  and  were  developed  by  association  in  the  period 
of  the  ascendancy  of  custom.  These  factors,  which  the  usual 
legal  discussions  overlook,  are  of  fundamental  importance  in  a 
psychological  analysis  of  the  motives  of  political  obedience. 

4.  It  has  frequently  happened  in  the  history  of  a  people  that 
a  partial  social  will — ^the  will  of  some  social  group — became 
ascendant  in  a  universe  of  social  relations  and  constrained  the 
great  mass  of  individual  wills  through  fear  into  certain  unwel- 
come modes  of  action.  Such  constraint,  however,  has  usually 
not  extended  to  all  departments  of  social  life,  but  only  to  certain 
external  acts  the  performance  of  which  left  the  deep  undercur- 
rent of  social  life  undisturbed.  The  vast  stream  of  social  senti- 
ment, desire,  hope  and  ambition  cannot  be  completely  focalized 
in  any  particular  body  of  determinate  persons.  For  this  reason 
despotisms  even  the  most  pronounced  usually  leave  their  sub- 
jects free  in  the  general  course  of  events  in  their  domestic  and 
religious  life.  Its  constraint  is  felt  chiefly  in  the  levying  of 
tribute  and  impressing  in  the  military  service.  In  other  spheres 
the  obedience  of  the  people  is  due  to  sentiments  and  feelings  of 
a  pervasive  nature  that  reside  rather  in  the  consciousness  of 
society  as  a  whole  than  in  any  one  individual  mind  to  the 
exclusion  of  others.  So  far,  however,  as  these  sentiments  and 
feelings  do  come  to  clearer  expression  in  some  personalities  than 
in  others,  such  personalities  are  centers  of  influence  not  because 
of  a  power  of  compulsory  subordination  which  they  possess,  but 
because  of  their  representative  function  in  some  association. 
The  influence  which  they  wield  may  at  times  constrain  indi- 
vidual wills,  relatively  few  in  number,  to  acts  that  they  would 
not  do  of  their  own  volition;  but  on  the  whole  the  influence 
is  possible  simply  because  the  people  feel  it  to  confirm  and 
strengthen  their  habitual  sentiments  and  beliefs.  Authority, 
so  far  as  it  is  despotic,  i.  e.,  so  far  as  it  merely  represents  the 
will  of  a  single  person,  or  a  class,  and  commands  obedience 
through  compulsion — acts  as  a  block  to  the  flow  of  mental  life 
at  the  points  of  constraint,  but  the  resulting  mental  conflict 
does  not  lead  to  a  healthy  apperceptive  activity  in  which  mental 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  83 

systems  are  united  into  a  more  comprehensive  and  unified  sys- 
tem, but  simply  to  an  arrest  that  means  aversion.  It  is  imma- 
terial whether  the  despotism  proceeds  from  a  native  or  ahen 
source,  for  the  mental  results  are  the  same.  Both  attain  their 
ends  by  inciting  the  public  mind  to  acts  that  do  not  flow  freely 
from  its  inner  constitution.  There  is  a  suppression  of  sentiments 
and  feelings  which  under  conditions  of  freedom  would  operate 
to  inhibit  or  perform  certain  acts.  Extended  to  all  departments 
of  life  as  a  real  principle  of  control,  compulsory  subordination 
would  ruin  all  creative  mental  activity  on  account  of  the 
encroachment  upon  apperception  by  the  habits  of  servility  in 
thought  which  are  developed  through  mere  compliance  with 
external  authority.  The  body  may  become  the  mere  passive 
instrument  of  physical  force,  but  the  personality  never,  for  the 
very  condition  of  its  manifestation  has  been  removed. 

5.  The  ascendancy  of  the  political  power  may  be  less  coercive 
and  in  more  intimate  contact  with  the  social  personality  if  it 
exercises  its  will  through  the  preformed  disposition  of  society 
which  is  mechanized  in  the  ancient  rights  and  customs.  The 
supremacy  of  English  power  in  India  furnishes  an  admirable 
example  of  this  more  organic  form  of  political  and  social  contact. 
According  to  Bryce,^  the  English  administrators  in  the  time 
of  Clive  and  Warren  Hastings,  found  in  the  native  law,  "First, 
a  large  and  elaborate  system  of  Inheritance  and  Family  Law. 
.  Secondly,  a  large  mass  of  customs  relating  to  the 
occupation  and  use  of  land  and  of  various  rights  concerned  with 
tillage  and  pasturage,  including  water-rights,  rights  of  soil-accre- 
tion on  the  banks  of  rivers,  and  forest  rights Thirdly, 

a  body  of  customs,  according  to  our  ideas  comparatively  scanty 
and  undeveloped,  but  still  important,  relating  to  the  transfer 
and  pledging  of  property,  and  to  contracts,  especially  commer- 
cial contracts Fourthly,  certain  penal  rules  drawn 

from  Musulman  law  and  more  or  less  enforced  by  Musulman 
princes.''  *'In  this  state  of  facts  the  British  officials  took  the 
line  which  practical  men,  having  their  hands  full  of  other  work, 
would  naturally  take,  viz:  the  line  of  least  resistance.     They 

^  Studies  in  History  and  Jurisprudence^  p.  98. 


84  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

accepted  and  carried  on  what  they  found.  Where  there  was 
native  law,  they  appHed  it,  Musulman  law  to  Musulmans, 
Hindu  law  to  Hindus,  and  in  the  few  places  where  they  were  to 
be  found,  Parsi  law  to  Parsis,  Jain  law  to  Jains. "^  Since  that 
time  many  acts  have  been  passed  codifying  and  amending  the 
native  law,  so  that  as  a  net  result  we  have  "the  new  stream  of 
united  law  which  has  its  source  in  the  codifying  Acts ''2  and 
"the  various  older  streams  of  law,  each  representing  a  religion. " 
Thus  an  ascendancy  like  that  of  British  power  in  India,  while 
exercising  but  little  direct  coercion,  really  touches  the  life  of  the 
subject  people  in  a  more  vital  manner  than  a  military  despotism 
would.  Instead  of  shrinking  the  mental  life  at  the  points  of 
contact  by  an  inhibitive  and  contractile  motive  like  fear,  it  really 
amplifies  it  by  giving  greater  stability  and  certainty  to  the  flow 
of  native  sentiment  and  feeling.  English  administration  and 
legislation  has  caused  most  changes  in  the  native  law  in  those 
spheres  where  the  native  law  was  either  meager  or  where  because 
of  its  peculiar  nature  it  was  comparatively  flexible.  The  modi- 
fication has  been  relatively  superficial  in  those  social  relations 
rooted  in  deep  habits  and  strong  sentiments. 

6.  In  passing  to  cases  where  the  law  and  the  power  that 
enforces  it  are  equally  indigenous  to  the  particular  society; 
where  the  law  has  had  a  slow  and  continuous  growth  through 
trial  and  experiment  in  which  the  people  themselves  have  played 
an  important  role,  we  find  the  points  of  contact  between  the 
legal  institutions  and  the  national  character  correspondingly 
multiplied.  There  is  here  also  a  determinate  person  or  body 
of  persons  to  whom  in  the  first  instance  the  making  and  enforc- 
ing of  laws  is  due;  but  here  the  ascendancy  is  due  more  than 
in  the  other  instances  to  the  fact  that  the  organized  personality 
of  society  finds  on  the  whole  an  adequate  expression  of  its  will 
through  the  instrumentality  of  such  a  body.  Political  power  is 
now  a  force  that  is  concerned  in  the  maintenance  and  protec- 
tion of  rights  that  meet  general  approval;  in  other  words,  with 
the  maintenance  of  general  social  conditions  that  are  necessary 

*  Bryce,  op.  cit.y  p.  99. 
^  Ihid.,  p.  105. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  85 

to  a  certain  freedom  of  volition.  When  a  power  of  this  sort 
exists,  which  "  prescribes  forms  and  obhgations  to  all  minor 
purposive  associations,  and  shapes  the  social  composition,"^  it 
may  be  fitly  described  as  the  organ  of  the  social  will,  since  it  is 
the  medium  through  which  habits  and  desires  of  the  social  mind 
come  to  expression  in  an  authoritative  way,  i.  e.,  in  a  way  that 
commands  the  usual  obedience  of  individual  wills. 

7.  While  the  usual  flow  of  social  thought  and  feeHng  comes 
to  regular  and  definite  expression  in  the  declarations  of  a  deter- 
minate body  of  persons,  in  time  of  serious  disturbance  it 
frequently  happens  that  no  particular  body  of  persons  can  be 
pointed  out  as  the  one  in  which  ultimate  authority  actually 
resides.  There  is  then  no  social  will.  Social  volition  has  become 
merely  social  emotion;  and  it  would  be  as  rational  to  apply  the 
term  will  to  the  ravings  and  fury  of  a  madman  as  to  the  public 
mind  in  a  state  of  excitement.  If  there  is  any  collective  tend- 
ency discernible  in  social  thought  and  feeling,  it  arises  from  the 
fact  that  some  of  the  various  motives  competing  in  the  public 
mind  through  their  massiveness  and  strength  turn  the  tide  of 
social  emotion  in  a  particular  direction.  Under  such  conditions 
there  is  no  organized  public  sentiment  and  no  particular  will 
through  which  the  social  will  declares  itself  The  usual  motives 
of  obedience  which  at  other  times  unite  to  produce  a  conscious- 
ness of  a  commonweal,  are  out  of  function.  The  effect  of  such 
a  state  of  the  public  mind  is  seen  objectively  in  the  suspension 
of  private  rights  by  which  individual  volition  enjoys  an  amount 
of  freedom  and  encouragement  otherwise  impossible.  Some 
order  emerges  from  this  confusion  when  the  points  of  conflict 
become  clearly  defined,  and  society  divides  into  two  contending 
parties,  each  having  a  degree  of  organization.  There  is  now 
no  soveriegn  power,  for  there  is  properly  no  social  will  in  the 
sense  of  an  organized  volitional  process  growing  out  of  the 
controlled  interplay  of  individual  minds.  What  we  really  have 
is  a  division  of  the  social  personality  with  the  mental  processes 
slightly  organized  about  two  competing  centers.  When  society 
is  thus  divided  into  two  hostile  camps,  there  is  usually  a  con- 

^Giddings:  Principles  of  Sociology y  p.  174,  ed.  1896. 


86  EDWIN  ANDREW  HATDEN. 

siderable  contraction  in  the  volume  of  national  life;  for  com- 
merce and  other  pursuits  are  partially  paralyzed.  Within  the 
ranks  of  each  party  we  see  something  of  control  and  obedience: 
each  party  has  a  leader,  a  definite  body  of  persons  to  which 
the  rank  and  file  render  obedience — an  obedience  which  at 
times  is  far  removed  from  servility,  being  inspired  by  a  keen 
sense  of  duty  and  a  rational  idea  of  common  welfare  and  of  the 
interests  at  stake.  But  still  it  is  true  that  private  rights  are 
insecure  under  such  conditions,  even  within  the  ranks  of  each 
party,  so  that  the  individual  is  frequently  compelled  to  do 
things  against  his  own  inclinations,  no  matter  how  great  may 
be  his  general  sympathy  for  the  cause  he  defends.  Fear  comes 
into  the  foreground  of  consciousness  as  one  of  the  motives  of 
obedience  at  times  of  martial  control.  When  the  mental  conflict 
in  the  social  mind  is  brought  to  an  issue,  the  emotional  excite- 
ment abates,  desire  is  again  subordinated  to  rational  control, 
and  a  supreme  social  will  once  more  emerges,  having  a  definite 
personal  medium  for  the  enforcement  of  its  declarations.  The 
private  rights,  temporarily  abridged,  are  restored,  giving  to  the 
individual  will  its  former,  and  perhapts  greater,  range  of  free- 
dom and  activity.  Now  we  have  a  personal  agency  exercising 
supreme  coercive  power  when  necessary  within  the  limits  of  a 
system  of  public  and  private  rights.  But  the  authorized  agency 
of  the  state,  viz:  the  government,  has  a  personality  in  some 
degree  its  own,  and  for  this  reason  does  not  usually  act  as  a 
mere  neutral  medium  of  expression.  Frequently  its  conduct  is 
dictated  by  egoistic  and  personal  rather  than  legal  and  social 
motives.  Frequently  too  it  acts  as  the  molder  of  public  opinion, 
awakening  the  social  consciousness  to  new  matters  of  general 
interest  and  importance  so  that  the  organ  of  sovereignty  must 
be  looked  upon  as  a  social  group  having  a  will  in  a  measure 
peculiar  to  itself.  It  thus  comes  about  that  the  sovereign  power 
may  enforce  laws  which  stand  in  conflict  with  the  social  will, 
at  variance  with  the  general  system  of  rights  which  guarantee 
the  individual  freedom  and  protection  in  his  ordinary  pursuits. 
8.  The  particular  way  in  which  the  forces  of  social  life  select 
the  membership  of  the  governing  body,  seems  to  stand  in  no 
necessary  relation  to  individual  freedom — at  best  only  remotely 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  87 

SO.    The  opinion  that  a  law  in  order  to  be  an  expression  of  the 
social  will  must  have  the  sanction  of  a  majority  ballot,  rests 
upon  a  superficial  view  of  things.    The  arts  of  the  demagogue 
may  so  push  private  interests  upon  the  attention  of  the  public 
that  a  majority  opinion  upon  the  matter  in  hand,  as  recorded 
in  a  general  ballot,  does  not  express  a  rational  volition,  but 
simply  the  desire  of  a  crowd  acting  under  suggestion;  while  the 
decision  of  a  select  body,  even  if  its  membership  is  hereditary, 
may  more  truly  reflect  the  real  will  of  society,  in  that  it  accords 
faithfully  with  the  spirit  of  the  total  system  of  public  and  private 
rights  obtaining  under  rational  conditions.    The  essential  thing 
is  that  the  governing  body  shall  be  responsive  to  the  hopes, 
sentiments  and  desires  of  the  people  as  these  organize  them- 
selves into  definite  and  urgent  opinions.     That  the  governing 
body  may  maintain  its  organic  connection  with  the  social  order, 
true  to  the  mission  it  has  of  maintaining  rights  and  enforcing 
obligations,  some  surety  beyond  its  condescension  and  good  will 
is  necessary.    There  must  be  institutional  limitations  that  act 
as  a  powerful  restraint  upon  the  excesses  of  the  will  of  the  sov- 
ereign power,  making  difficult  any  concerted  action  toward  the 
usurpation  of  authority  and  keeping  the  people  in  an  attitude 
defensive  of  their  rights.    Provided  the  individual  has  in  certain 
spheres  of  life  that  freedom  of  volition  necessary  to  creative 
mental  activity,  a  people  may  rise  to  a  considerable  plane  of 
culture  though  the  legislative  and  administrative  functions  of 
the  state  are  practically  in  the  hands  of  an  hereditary  class. 
Custom  generally  acts  as  a  sufficient  protection  against  the  com- 
plete abrogation  of  a  right,  but  is  a  weak  security  against  the 
invasion  of  the  right  so  far  as  isolated  individuals  are  concerned. 
But  something  more  than  this  is  imperative,  if  the  state  is  tos 
be  an  efficient  association  in  realizing  the  moral  possibilities  of  \ 
man:  rights  must  be  so  secure  that  the  humblest  citizen  can  ) 
command  the  aid  of  the  state  in  his  defense  with  as  little  effort"^ 
as  the  most  influential.     The  modern  system  of  representative  ) 
government  by  which  the  personnel  of  the  law-making  body  is 
in  part  directly  determined  by  the  choice  of  the  people,  hasi 
much  to  commend  it  as  a  limitation  to  despotic  authority.    It' 
is  the  most  effective  instrument  yet  devised  for  converting  public 


EDWIN  ANDREW  HAYDEN. 


opinion  into  a  practical  force  in  political  control,  besides  being 
a  discipline  of  the  highest  order  in  training  people  into  habits 
of  independence  and  self-reliance. 

9.  Between  political  and  other  social  institutions  history 
reveals  a  delicate  interdependence:  universally  societies  having 
a  high  mental  organization  as  externally  manifest  in  the  crea- 
tions of  art,  science,  and  industry,  are  states  of  corresponding 
political  development,  guaranteeing  rights  and  engaging  in  lines 
of  endeavor  that  make  for  the  moral  and  spiritual  perfection 
of  man.  Then  law  is  something  more  than  a  rule  imposed  by 
an  external  authority;  it  is  a  system  of  rights  collaborated  by  the 
nation  in  the  mental  conflict  that  on  the  one  hand  gives  a  social 
will  capable  of  realizing  certain  collective  aims  and  on  the  other 
an  individual  will  organizing  social  experiences  in  its  own  way. 
The  struggle  has  been  more  of  a  conflict  between  the  partial 
wills  of  antagonistic  social  groups  than  between  individual 
minds  of  the  same  social  level.  The  cleavage  in  the  struggle 
has  usually  begun  in  the  upper  social  ranks  of  superior  initia- 
tive, working  an  alignment  on  this  side  or  that  side  of  the  point 
at  issue  as  it  moved  downward  through  the  various  strata  of 
social  life.  A  vast  upheaval  from  the  social  depths  can  occur 
only  in  the  relatively  late  stages  of  social  history,  when  a  vigor- 
ous interchange  of  thought  and  feeling  is  going  on  among  and 
between  social  classes.  Some  great  leader  may  then  emerge 
from  the  commons  to  voice  their  demands  in  tones  that  compel 
an  extension  of  their  legal  and  political  rights  and  make  the 
state  still  more  the  servant  of  the  humble  citizen  in  protecting 
his  now  greater  sphere  of  freedom  from  invasion. 


THE  SOCIAL  WILL.  89 

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INDEX. 

Adoption,  ceremony  of:  extends  the  universe  of  moral  feeling,  58. 

Animals;  mind  of,  3-5;  as  systems  of  energy,  11. 

Apperception:  relation  of,  to  invention,  32-34;  to  association,  30. 

Art:  a  form  of  mental  expression,  8. 

Attention:  see  apperception,  also  mental  systems. 

Attitudes  of  the  self  toward  experience:  47-49. 

Bagehot:  on  emotion  of  conviction,  17;  on  authority  and  discussion,  45. 

Baldwin:  referred  to,  22;  on  "particularizing"  function  of  the  individual  mind, 
81. 

Belief  or  Beliefs:  as  a  mental  process,  16-20;  differs  from  knowledge,  16;  conflict 
in,  17;  in  relation  to  the  imagination,  17,  18;  is  a  native  attitude  of  mind, 
19;  effect  on  life  and  of  life  on  it,  19;  outgrown,  19;  in  relation  to  the  will, 
20-27;  fixed,  function  of,  26;  see  also  systematization  of  belief. 

Bentley:  on  memory  image,  4. 

Bethe:  on  instinct,  3. 

Bryce,  James:  quoted,  23,  83,  84;  referred  to,  3. 

Caste-morality:  nature  of,  59. 

Child:  mind  of,  9. 

Civilized  mind:  nature  of,  9. 

Coercion:  eflfects  of,  on  mental  life,  82,  83. 

Commonweal:  concept  of,  changes  in  course  of  history,  78-79. 

Commercial  Intercourse:  in  relation  to  social  ideals,  59. 

Consciousness:  social,  i-io. 

Custom:  "  change  of  purpose  in,"  32;  morality  of,  75;  relation  to  self-conscious- 
ness, 71;  protects  rights,  Sy. 

Darwin:  theory  of  natural  selection,  33;  circumspection  of,  40. 

Degeneracy:  difference  between  individual  and  social,  62. 

Deliberation:  collective,  21-23. 

Desire:  nature  of,  11-16;  representation  in,  13;  theoretical,  13;  conflict  in,  14; 
universe  of,  15;  modified  by  history,  15,  16;  in  relation  to  the  will,  20-27. 

Delusions:  in  social  mind,  not  symptomatic  of  social  decay,  62. 

Economy:  industrial,  rests  on  national  sentiment,  66. 

Effort:  law  of,  57;  see  also  conflict. 

Egoism:  in  times  of  social  disorder,  61;  contractile  nature  of,  78. 

Emotion:  in  the  social  mind,  63,  64. 

Energy:  systems  of,  10. 

Environment:  social,  as  a  source  of  mental  impressions,  5. 

Evil:  moral,  nature  of,  51-53. 

Experience:  physical  and  psychological  view  of,  10. 

Family:  center  of  feeling,  57. 

Faith:  see  belief. 

Fear:  as  a  motive  in  political  control,  84. 


92  INDEX. 

Feeling:  impersonal,  47;  ethical,  social  universes  to  which  attached,  58;  personal 
in  economic  sphere,  64. 

Freedom:  desire  for,  a  social  desire,  74-75;  relation  of  to  government,  86-88. 

Geography:  a  social  discipline,  10. 

Gesture-language,  7. 

Giddings:  referred  to,  22;  on  state,  85. 

Government:  in  relation  to  freedom,  86;  responsive  to  public  opinion;  limits 
to  the  function  of,  86,  87. 

Habit:  in  relation  to  instinct,  5;  in  social  volition,  25,  26;  in  private  association 
transferred  to  public,  75,  76. 

Heredity:  in  child;  9;  limits  the  idealization  of  desire,  12;  see  also  instinct. 

Ideas:  spread  of,  checked  by  indifference  or  opposition,  41. 

Ideals:  univers^  of,  48;  in  relation  to  belief,  49;  moral,  variation  in,  54,  55;  lim- 
ited by  heiredity,  54;  ascendancy,  conditioned  by  the  set  of  the  public  mind, 
55;  sustained  by  practical  activities,  55;  of  the  social  life,  55,  56;  appercep- 
tive control  in,  56;  national,  interconnected  with  egoistic  motives  in  devel- 
opment of  state,  78, 

Ignorance:  resists  the  spread  of  ideas,  42;  gives  a  pedagogical  economy,  57. 

Imitation:  psychological  nature\of,  30-33. 

Image:  mental,  genetic  function  of,  4. 

Inhibition:  in  social  mind,  28. 

Instinct:  nature  of,  3. 

Institutions:  political,  in  relation  to  social  development,  88. 

Intermixtures  of  cultures :  extends  the  universe  of  moral  ideals,  59. 

Intercourse:  universe  of,  personal  feeling  in,  47,  48. 

Interpretation:  judicial,  legislative  function  of,  68. 

James,  Professor:  referred  to,  19. 

Judge:  personality  of,  as  a  medium  of  law,  67. 

Knox:  Bagehot  on  temperament  of,  17. 

Language:  function  of,  6  fF. 

Law:  sentiment  of,  63-79;  as  constraint  of  the  individual  by  social  will,  65; 
crime  conflicts  with  the  consciousness  of,  65;  liberal  construction  of,  67; 
should  correspond  with  the  general  sentiment  of  justice,  68;  consciousness 
of,  varies  in  the  different  social  groups,  68;  British  in  India,  83,  84; 
struggle  for,  begins  in  the  upper  social  ranks,  88. 

Le  Bon :  on  imagination  of  crowds,  35. 

Life  and  faith,  19. 

Louis  XIV:  reign  of,  30. 

Loyola:  Bagehot  on  temperament  of,  19. 

Mania:  moral  feeling  in,  61. 

Maudsley:  on  moral  feeling,  62. 

MelanchoHa:  moral  feeling  in,  61. 

Memory:  contents  of,  modified  by  history,  18. 

Mental  systems:  unfoldment  of,  in  social  mind,  34;  conditions  of  the  vigor  of, 
35 J  38;  two  kinds,  perceptual  and  conceptual,  38;  development  of,  39; 
flexibility  of,  40;  conflict  of,  in  social  mind,  40-45;  conflict  of,  in  moral 
right,  53;  conflict  of,  in  legal  right,  -J^,  74. 

Morgan :  on  universe  of  discourse,  33. 

Newton:  corpuscular  theory  of  light,  8,40;  theory  of  gravitation,  39. 


INDEX 


93 


Nature:  primitive  idea  of,  6. 

Opposition:  resists  the  spread  of  ideas,  41,  42;  see  also  conflict. 

Personalism,  9. 

Personality:  social,  11-27;  i^^^^  of  social,  55-58;  juristic  conception  of,  64;  divi- 
sion of,  suspends  sovereignty,  85. 

Punishment:  moral  effect  of,  65;  by  state,  72. 

Reaction  to  stimuH:  by  plants  and  animals,  11. 

Representations:  in  animal  mind,  4. 

Right,  legal:  stability  of,  35;  assertion  of,  by  individual,  a  moral  necessity,  69; 
energy  of  the  feeling  of,  69-71;  security  of,  depends  on  the  state,  71,72; 
mental  conflict  in  the  development  of,  73,74;  moral,  47-62,  see  ideals. 

Roman  law:  flexibility  of,  40. 

Savages:  mind  of,  6. 

Selection:  natural,  3,33;  of  social  ideals,  54. 

Self:  attitudes  of,  toward  experience,  47-49;  ideal  of,  social,  49,  50;  ethical,  nature 
of,  50-52. 

Self-consciousness:  in  the  mythologic  mind,  10;  in  belief,  17;  unfoldment  of, 
in  moral  conflict,  48. 

State:  social  will  expressed  in,  23;  Bryce  on  the  work  of  the,  23;  personality  of, 
23;  as  an  undertaker  of  social  enterprise,  66;  ends  of,  66;  as  a  coercive 
power,  74,  79;  organized  expression  of  humanity,  79. 

Slaves:  Athenian,  5. 

Sovereignty:  doctrine  of,  80-88;  reality  of  the  individual  will  and  of  the  social 
will  in  the  fact  of,  80,  81 ;  universalism  in  the  theory  of,  81;  presupposes  the 
idea  of  law  in  the  social  mind,  81;  as  coercion,  82,83;  as  authority 
exercised  according  to  some  standard  of  right,  by  an  alien  power,  83,  84;  by 
by  a  native  power,  84;  suspension  of,  85,  86. 

Spencer:  on  insect  communities  as  expanded  families,  i;  referred  to,  6. 

Stout:  on  habit,  25;  on  belief  as  a  limitation  of  activity,  17. 

Tarde:  referred  to,  1 1 ;  on  desire  and  environment,  15;  on  ephemeral  beliefs,  26. 

Thorndike:  on  free  ideas  in  the  animal  mind,  4. 

Toleration :  in  social  strife,  44, 45. 

Tribal  group:  as  the  primordial  universe  of  ethical  obligation,  57. 

Values,  moral:  changed  by  openness  of  the  mind  to  social  suggestion,  60;  confu- 
sion of,  in  times  of  new  endeavors,  61. 

Vote,  public:  does  not  necessarily  express  the  social  will,  86-87. 

Verdicts,  judicial:  checks  in,  68. 

Wallace,  A,  R.:  natural  selection,  33. 

Will:  belief  and  desire  in  relation  to,  20-27;  coordinates  desire  and  belief  in  a 
social  process,  20-21;  individual  wills  connected  in  a  total  will,  21;  ration- 
ality of,  depends  in  part  on  the  number  interacting,  21;  collective  delib- 
eration possible,  21-23;  expressed  in  the  state,  23, 24;  habit  in  social,  25,  26; 
lack  of  apperceptive  control  in,  26,  27;  moral,  in  relation  to  the  imagination, 
51;  in  moral  conflict,  52;  aberration  of  individual,  52,53;  aims  at  universal 
ends,  100;  social  will  constrains  the  individual  through  the  law,  65;  social 
will  encourages  the  individual  through  the  law,  66. 

Witchcraft:  delusion  at  Salem,  62. 

Wundt:  on  sexual  communities,  2;  on  religious  desire,  15;  on  change  of  purpose 
in  custom,  31. 


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